
The central government has succeeded in increasing the number of foreign professionals in Taiwan, but structural, economic, and regulatory hurdles could limit their contributions.
In late September, Taiwan’s National Development Council (NDC) announced its plan for a “Global Elite” card, the latest in a series of initiatives aimed at deepening the island nation’s international talent pool and boosting its economic competitiveness.
Now in its nascent planning stages, the Global Elite Card is expected to offer a more premium version of Taiwan’s existing Employment Gold Card for foreign professionals. While the Gold Card allows holders to stay in Taiwan for up to three years with open work rights, the Global Elite Card will go further, making holders eligible for permanent residency and social benefits, such as long-term care, after just one year.
However, it will be a more selective program, with applicants required to have an annual salary of at least NT$6 million (US$189,000). By comparison, the Gold Card necessitates a monthly salary of NT$160,000 (US$5,000).
Both programs aim to tackle Taiwan’s long-standing challenges of “brain drain” and the need for stronger international connections. The NDC projects that by 2028, Taiwan will face a talent shortage of approximately 350,000 people. To address this issue, the Council plans to attract 200,000 “highly skilled” and “mid-level skilled” workers to Taiwan by that deadline.
In some respects, the Gold Card program has been a success. In July, President Lai Ching-te announced that Taiwan had issued its 10,000th Gold Card. In a ceremony at the Presidential Office commemorating the occasion, Lai issued Gold Cards to several senior executives. They included Rakuten System Security Team Founder Yoshinari Fukumoto, Micron Taiwan corporate Vice President Lu Dong-hui, and East Asia Super League Chief Commercial Officer Mark Fischer.
Alan McIvor, practice leader at executive search firm Paul Wright Group in Taipei, says that “there is a huge amount of talent within [the Gold Card] community. It is great that Taiwan has been able to attract some of these people to the market.”

search firm Paul Wright Group in Taipei,
says talent among the Gold Card community
is abundant.
At the same time, he notes that “some of these Gold Card holders can get quite frustrated with their job search and the Taiwan working culture. Salary levels have also been a bit of an issue for the expats who have moved here from the U.S., Singapore, and Europe.”
To be sure, Taiwan’s working culture differs significantly from that of North America and Europe. Still, it may be easier for Western expatriates to adapt to compared to the more rigid environments in South Korea or Japan – both of which are also eager to attract foreign professionals.
Where Taiwan truly diverges from South Korea and Japan is in its economic structure. While all three countries have pursued developmentalist economic policies in which the state guides industry, Taiwan relies the most on manufacturing, is smallest in terms of population, and has the fewest prominent international companies.
Taiwan’s economy is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that serve as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). They typically have slim profit margins. Thus, it’s no surprise that they rarely offer competitive pay. But even larger Taiwanese companies that primarily serve as OEMs often fail to offer salaries competitive on the international stage.
At the same time, Taiwan’s onerous regulations can make setting up a business difficult for foreign entrepreneurs. “Taiwanese law regarding company formation is too complicated,” says Sam Reynolds, a Taipei-based expert on digital assets and technology hardware. In 2013, Reynolds and his colleagues at a tech media startup attempted to establish their company in Taiwan but were bogged down by a complex regulatory landscape. Ultimately, they opted to register in Hong Kong instead.
“There has yet to be a compelling international startup from Taiwan that puts the island on a map,” says Reynolds. “Taiwan lags far behind even places like Malaysia in this regard, which gave us Grab (a ride-hailing and food delivery app) and has a number of well-known crypto startups like CoinGecko and Etherscan.”
Economic diversification
The Taiwanese government has long recognized the need for economic diversification and the potential role of international talent in that process. It has also sought to leverage geopolitical changes to capitalize on Taiwan’s strengths. When it comes to the media sector, it has had some success, even if the contribution to GDP is modest. The value of greater international media exposure is significant for diplomatically isolated Taiwan, even if difficult to measure in purely monetary terms.
Since 2019, the number of foreign journalists has roughly doubled, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). Taiwan hosts 174 foreign journalists and 82 international media organizations from 20 countries, MOFA said in November 2023. The Ministry added that it welcomes foreign journalists and does its utmost to make their stay in Taiwan as smooth as possible.
Yet the surge in foreign journalists has less to do with Taiwan’s policies than it does with a dramatically worsening media environment in both mainland China and Hong Kong. The erstwhile British Crown Colony was once a preferred media hub in Asia, which foreign journalists reluctantly exited only after Beijing’s abrupt passage of a draconian national security law in the territory in June 2020 created unacceptable risks for their profession. Mainland China, meanwhile, expelled most American journalists from its borders in February 2020 as tensions flared with the United States. Some have relocated to Taiwan.
The deterioration of Hong Kong’s business environment has also prompted discussion in Taiwan about the potential to lure away the city’s financial talent. In August 2020, then-President Tsai Ing-wen said that Taiwan would further liberalize its economy and offer more financial products, aiming to become an Asian financial and asset management hub. While she did not mention Hong Kong in her speech, it was widely understood within Taiwan’s financial community that her administration sought to attract foreign finance professionals from the city.
Tsai again called for Taiwan to develop itself as a financial hub in May 2022. Speaking at a launch ceremony for National Chengchi University’s College of Global Banking and Finance, she emphasized that sound economic growth had led to strong credit ratings and ample foreign exchange reserves, giving Taiwan a strong base from which to develop itself as a hub.
More than four years after President Tsai’s initial address on the subject, Taiwan’s financial industry has seen little obvious change. It remains largely focused on the domestic market, and significant regulatory reforms that could foster industry expansion have yet to materialize. Although some international financial professionals have left Hong Kong, the majority have chosen to relocate to Singapore over Taiwan.
“Taiwan’s development of an international asset management center is a long-term, step-by-step process, starting from customer needs and recently expanding product supply,” says Lai Wei-jen, an associate research fellow at the Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance (TABF), a think tank and training center. Lai notes that the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) has an “open-minded perspective” about the matter and is consulting with both the domestic and international finance industry ahead of possible regulatory changes.
Still, he acknowledges it will not be easy for Taiwan to compete with Hong Kong and Singapore as an asset management hub – even if the primary goal is to repatriate Taiwanese-owned assets rather than attract a broader international client base.

For Taiwan to succeed in asset management like Hong Kong and Singapore, it “first needs to examine why these asset managers prefer to keep their assets in Hong Kong and Singapore rather than return their funds to Taiwan for investment,” Lai says. “Various legal restrictions, tax differences, and even issues such as wealth privacy need to be resolved first.”
While building an international financial hub may be a heavy lift, other globally oriented industries are developing rapidly in Taiwan. For instance, Taiwan has completed 2.25 gigawatts of offshore wind farms. According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, this achievement is not only the best among democratic nations in the Asia-Pacific region but also ranks high by global standards.
Another area where Taiwan can look to attract international talent is AI. Taiwan is well positioned to produce cutting-edge AI hardware because of its world-leading semiconductor industry and extensive tech manufacturing ecosystem.
In July, the Ministry of Digital Affairs announced that it had secured an NT$10 billion (US$304.53 million) budget to invest in innovative services related to AI. The Ministry said that it planned to work with Amazon Web Services, angel investors, and venture capital firms on AI applications.
Some observers question whether limited English proficiency in Taiwan might hinder its drive to attract more international talent. While the government previously vowed to make Taiwan a bilingual nation by 2030, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao acknowledged in July that the process would be lengthier. “The bilingual policy cannot be achieved in a short time,” he told the Chinese-language Liberty Times. “It may take 20 or 30 years.”
Increasing English level proficiency across Taiwan is a good idea, even if it is a slow mountain to climb, says McIvor. “In my experience, almost everyone in senior corporate roles in Taiwan speaks English very proficiently already. Moving the whole country forward is definitely worth the effort.”