Engineer salaries tripled to try to attract the best talent from Silicon Valley. Chinese companies are not skimping on resources in the race for AI and other emerging technologies. Enough to frighten the great Western powers and their intelligence services. Let’s take stock.
The race for talent
In a fascinating investigation, our colleagues from Wall Street Journal first of all come back to a fact. European and American governments are working to reduce China’s access to the most sensitive technologies. According to them, companies in the Middle Kingdom get around this problem by trying to attract the best engineers, particularly in the field of AI and semiconductors.
Some companies even go so far as to open local branches where they disguise their Chinese origins to slip through the cracks and bring in key employees of technology firms.
Many engineers are reluctant to accept his offers. They particularly fear for their reputation and their integration within companies with a Chinese culture. But, by multiplying the attempts, by resorting to headhunters and taking out the checkbook, some end up being convinced.
The alert of the intelligence services
This approach works at first glance, because in Europe and the United States, the mentality is quite open when it comes to the recruitment of employees by rival companies, wherever they come from. Except that those responsible for the intelligence services are starting to sound the alarm about these practices. Uncle Sam even judges that this is a deliberate tactic by this rival country to try to become a scientific and technological superpower.
The American newspaper cites in particular the case of Germany where these recruitments took on a political aspect. A new law was even almost passed to prevent these poachings by companies from the Middle Kingdom. However, the fall of the government led by Olaf Scholz complicated things.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union, who could well succeed him next year, also wanted to be firm on this subject. He thus asserts that “German companies are also a target. And that is not acceptable. »
As one might expect, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denies it outright. If he recognizes that China’s interaction with Tech talents exists, it would not be different from that practiced by other great powers. He also rejects the fact that it would be a means of stealing intellectual property, calling this idea “baseless slander”.
