Students’ cheap labour powers Taiwan’s semiconductor factories

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.

Before Dang Nhut Hao came to Taiwan, he knew nothing about semiconductors.

Growing up in Dong Thap – a southern Vietnamese province on the Mekong Delta famous for its rice fields, red-headed cranes and lakes dotted with lotuses – Dang loved biology, and got into one of Ho Chi Minh City’s most prestigious undergraduate science programmes in 2019. But his family couldn’t afford the tuition. At the age of 18, Dang took out a loan of 80,000 New Taiwan dollars ($2,450) and flew to Taipei to join a semiconductor and electro-optical engineering work-study programme.

“Although the cost of living and tuition here are higher than in Vietnam, I could earn money on my own, pay for everything myself, and support myself,” Dang, who has since graduated, told Rest of World.

Dang is among thousands of teenagers from Southeast Asia who have been recruited into work-study programmes since 2017, and ended up in factory jobs in Taiwan’s booming semiconductor sector. The tiny island supplies 63% of the world’s semiconductors – chips that power everything from LED bulbs to smartphones, electric cars, and artificial intelligence models. The industry is growing rapidly, with revenue expected to…

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