Taiwan and India plan to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on labor cooperation, potentially allowing Indian workers to fill labor shortages in Taiwan, experts say.
Taiwan and India are considering signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on labor cooperation. While it has not been formally signed yet, some people are worried that bringing in Indian migrant workers would increase the crime rate, and are organizing a protest march next month.
An Indian scholar Sana Hashmi said that Taiwanese netizens’ reaction had shocked Indian society. Indian workers are present all over the world, and they never encountered backlash of this kind. According to her analysis, given Taiwan’s efforts in recent years to expand international participation, the signing of the MOU “would bring more benefits for Taiwan than it would India.”
In view of the diversity of languages spoken in India, a Taiwanese academic advised identifying a small number of provinces where English is more widely spoken to conduct a pilot program and bring in Indian laborers on a small scale. Migrant worker groups have called on the government to investigate and publicize which industries face labor shortages and improve the circumstances of migrant workers, who have long been subjected to poor working conditions and demonization.
Sana Hashmi, a visiting fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation (TAEF), said in an interview with The News Lens on the 23rd that she was surprised that there had been such a big backlash and that although there had been little discussion of the signing of the Taiwan-India labor cooperation MOU in India, most of it had been positive because it was a “logical” decision. India and Taiwan had friendly diplomatic relations, and therefore surely more Indians would come to work in Taiwan. Since many Taiwanese agreed that Taiwan’s international participation should be expanded, the signing of a labor cooperation MOU between Taiwan and India should be seen as part of external relations.
Bringing in Indian migrant workers was logical not only diplomatically but economically, and it had worked for years in other countries. Hashmi pointed out that India was one of the largest source countries for blue-collar laborers in the world. Many Indian workers had gone to work in the Middle East, Singapore, and other countries. “We have never encountered a reaction like the one from Taiwan (society).” Many Indians were also shocked by the backlash from Taiwanese society.
Hashmi said that those who opposed letting in Indian migrant workers might not have realized that the MOU could benefit both sides and “would bring more benefits for Taiwan than it would India.” Hashmi explained that if more Indians come to work in Taiwan, the Indian government will become more proactive in developing its affairs with Taiwan; conversely, if there are no Indians in Taiwan, and no opportunities to create tangible economic benefits, why would India be interested in Taiwan?
Hashmi also criticized Bloomberg’s report for saying that the signing of the Taiwan-India labor cooperation MOU could potentially anger China. She said it was concrete evidence of “misinformation spread by the Western media.”
Hashmi said that Western media often reported on Taiwan’s external relations with the frame of “what would China think about this?” and gave undue attention to China, which was “surely happy to provide responses”. Hashmi emphasized that the signing of the MOU between Taiwan and India was intended to promote economic cooperation and that exchanges between the two countries in this area were not without precedents.
Hashmi pointed out that India’s external economic relations in the past were not particularly inclined toward Taiwan, but the relationship between the two countries in recent years made progress, which made India more keen than ever on cooperation with Taiwan. In addition to Taiwan’s important strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region, the country’s strong semiconductor and electronics industries were also considered as potential partners by India, which was establishing its own semiconductor industry. Hashmi said that economic and trade cooperation with Taiwan had been a topic of discussion among Indian leaders recently, including India’s foreign minister.
Fang Tien-sze, deputy director of the Center for India Studies at Tsing Hua University, told The News Lens that the signing of the MOU between Taiwan and India would be a mutually beneficial agreement and that Taiwan did have the problem of labor shortage. He said if Indian laborers were willing to come to supplement Taiwan’s workforce, it would be beneficial to Taiwan’s economic development.
Fang also said that as there were no formal diplomatic relations between Taiwan and India, labor cooperation would add another basis for exchanges between the two countries in addition to Chinese language education, economic and trade cooperation, and other areas. Fang said frankly that it was not practical to talk about strategic security cooperation without a solid foundation between Taiwan and India.
In response to the recent Internet backlash against bringing in Indian migrant workers, the Ministry of Labor pointed to the incident as misinformation from abroad, but Fang held a different view. He said that although he did not rule out the fact that concerning this issue there was room for cognitive warfare manipulation, Taiwanese society did misunderstand India and Southeast Asian countries, which over time evolved into discrimination, and that was why the issue of Indian migrant workers had been blown out of proportion.
Fang Tien-sze said that social differences between Taiwan and India resulted in psychological barriers in the past. In contrast, Taiwanese people were not so unfamiliar with Southeast Asia. Before migrant workers were brought in from that region, a lot of Southeast Asian cultural elements could already be found in Taiwan. The proportion of Taiwanese people traveling to Southeast Asia was also high, unlike the few civil exchanges between Taiwan and India.
According to the data from the Tourism Administration, Ministry of Transportation and Communications, after the pandemic lockdown was lifted, 23,588 Indian tourists came to Taiwan from January to September this year, which was more than the number of tourists from the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and other European countries. However, the number of Taiwanese tourists visiting India was “mediocre.” So far this year, only 624 people have traveled to India, which may have been related to the fact that direct flights have not resumed yet.
Hashmi pointed out that there were no direct flights between Taiwan and India and that civil exchanges were few. Taiwanese people’s understanding of India was mostly through Western media, but the Western media did not understand India and had biases, leading to long-term misunderstanding of India in Taiwanese society. “The core of Taiwan-India relations is people,” Hashmi said frankly, adding that there must be direct exchanges between the people of Taiwan and those of India, or else misunderstandings would continue to exist.
Fang Tien-sze also said that there existed substantial differences within India itself and that there were many different languages in the country. If we were to take in the labor force of all Indian provinces at once, communications would be difficult due to language barriers.
Fang said that in 2017 Taiwan was actually already mulling signing a labor cooperation MOU with India, which focused on India’s northeastern region. It had a relatively high proportion of the English-speaking population. Besides, the ethnicities of residents in the northeastern region were closer to those of Tibetans and Southeast Asians, and their social norms and culture were closer to those of Taiwan. Fang suggested finding one or two provinces from which to begin bringing in workers on a small-scale trial basis.
In response to the issue of introducing Indian migrant workers, a new group named “Opposing Increasing [the number of] New Migrant Countries” has recently been established on the Internet, and it is expected to take to the streets on December 3. Even so, Wu Ching-ju, who is a researcher at the Taiwan International Workers Association (TIWA) and has long paid attention to the rights of migrant workers in Taiwan, pointed out that the TIWA did not oppose bringing in foreign migrant workers and thought that the group’s demand did not sound like it understood the current situation of migrant workers in Taiwan. The TIWA found it “bizarre” that they had such a strong reaction to India’s case.
Wu said, as an example, the group especially pointed out that there were currently 85,000 missing migrant workers in Taiwan, but the issue of missing migrant workers actually reflected the fact that the Taiwanese government had long been demonizing migrant workers with the use of language like “catching run-away migrant workers” by labor authorities, the police, judiciary, and other government agencies. She pointed out that the root cause of the missing migrant worker problem was still the workers’ inability to switch employers freely, and that was why migrant workers would escape when they encountered problems. The government treated migrant workers as slave labor, and people were afraid of migrant workers. Such a mindset was unacceptable.
Although the TIWA did not oppose bringing in migrant workers, Wu also called on the government to investigate which industries and professions were experiencing labor shortages and ensure that the investigation would be transparent. It should not let employers use labor shortage as an excuse to hire foreign migrant workers at low wages, worsening the overall working conditions.
According to the Ministry of Labor’s statistics, there were more than 750,000 migrant workers in Taiwan as of October this year, with Indonesia accounting for the largest number of 269,322, followed by Vietnam with 262,546, and the Philippines with 151,562 as the third largest source of migrant workers in Taiwan.
The article first appeared in The News Lens Chinese edition. Translation is made by Edward Ying-Jen Lin.
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