Taiwan accuses Luxshare head of China of stealing trade secrets from Taiwanese companies :

Taiwanese prosecutors have indicted Wang Laichun, the head of Chinese technology company Luxshare Precision, alleging that he used a shell company to quietly acquire a key Taiwanese company and steal trade secrets. This is the latest instance of a Chinese company being accused of technology theft against a Taiwanese company.

According to the US financial media Bloomberg News reported on Thursday (September 1), Taiwanese prosecutors said in the indictment that in 2012, Wang Laichun used a Hong Kong company to cover up the identity of Luxshare Precision and secretly acquired Taiwanese electronic components company Xuande Technology (SpeedTech Corp) stock.

Taiwanese law prohibits mainland Chinese companies from conducting business in Taiwan without approval from the Taiwanese government.

Luxshare Precision was established on May 24, 2004 and is headquartered in Dongguan, Shenzhen. Its founder, Wang Laichun, used to be an ordinary worker at Fujitsu, an Apple product assembly company. Under her leadership, Luxshare has joined Apple's component supply chain and has grown rapidly, becoming one of the fastest-growing technology companies in China.

In 2022, Wang Laichun will be included in the Forbes China Outstanding Business Women List, with Cheng Xue of Haitian Flavor, Wu Yajun of Longfor Group, Fan Hongwei of Hengli Petrochemical and Dong Mingzhu of Gree Electric occupy the top five of the list.

According to Reuters, prosecutors in Taiwan's New Taipei City filed a lawsuit against Luxshare Precision last month, accusing 14 of the company's employees of stealing trade secrets from Taiwanese suppliers and acquiring orders from Apple Inc.

Prosecutors in New Taipei City said that after more than a year of investigation, it was found that Luxshare Precision targeted the backbone of its competitor Taiwan Kecheng Technology's R&D team, lured them with high salaries to serve Luxshare Precision, and also stole the Taiwanese company. trade secrets, causing "great losses" to it.

New Taipei City prosecutors said in a statement that Luxshare's purpose in doing so was to "quickly build a factory to mass-produce cases for Apple products such as iPhones and iPads."

As relations between China and the United States have deteriorated, the U.S. government has tightened restrictions on technology exports to China, including chip exports. To overcome the chip shortage, the Chinese government has allocated huge funds to encourage companies to develop large-scale chips. With the development of this national chip campaign, the outside world has found that more and more Taiwanese chip company executives have appeared in Chinese chip companies.

Several government agencies, including the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, have repeatedly condemned Beijing's efforts to encourage domestic companies to obtain advanced foreign technology through theft. Taiwan has also found that local chip engineers and chip technology continue to flow to mainland Chinese companies, which has constituted a serious national security problem.

Beginning this year, the Taiwanese government has stepped up its enforcement efforts, prohibiting mainland companies from hiring high-end talents in Taiwan's sensitive industries, such as chip manufacturing.

On August 25, US President Biden signed an executive order to allocate $52.7 billion for the implementation of the "Chip and Science Act" for semiconductor manufacturing and research and development activities in the United States.

The Chip and Science Act provides investment tax incentives for chip factories, which are expected to total $24 billion. In addition, the law authorizes $200 billion in funding for scientific research in the United States over the next decade.

The executive order also created a 16-member interagency steering committee consisting of National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Acting Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Alondra Nelson co-chairs. Other members include the secretary of state, as well as the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Commerce, Labor and Energy departments.