Almost 60% of Taiwanese working overseas located in China

Taipei, March 16 (CNA) Almost 60 percent of Taiwanese people working overseas in 2015 were located in China, making it the most favorable destination for local jobseekers, according to government statistics released Thursday.

The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said that a total of 420,000 Taiwanese worked in China in 2015, accounting for 58 percent of the total 724,000 working overseas. That is the latest year for which such statistics have been compiled.

In 2015, the number of Taiwanese employees located in China fell slightly from 427,000 in 2014, when the ratio stood at 58.84 percent, the DGBAS said.

The decline in the number of Taiwanese working in China reflected a drop in foreign investment there, where labor costs are on the rise, hampering to some extent the willingness of foreign investors to go there, the DGBAS said.

The DGBAS said that the number of Taiwanese working in Southeast Asia in 2015 totaled 111,000, down 1.33 percent from a year earlier due to rising negative sentiment held by people there against ethnic Chinese in recent years.

For example, anti-China riots erupted in Vietnam in 2014 over a Chinese oil-drilling venture in an area of the South China Sea that Hanoi regards as part of its exclusive economic zone, and Formosa Plastics Group was one of the victims of this anti-China sentiment.

In 2014, the number of Taiwanese working in Southeast Asia rose only 3.83 percent from a year earlier, moderating from an 18.81 percent year-on-year increase seen in 2013, the DGBAS data shows.

Southeast Asia accounted for 15.40 percent of the total number of Taiwanese working overseas after China, the statistics indicate.

The number of Taiwanese working in the United States in 2015 rose 7.04 percent from a year earlier to 92,000 after a 7.19 percent increase in 2014, when the number stood at 86,000, the statistics show.

The U.S. came in third, making up 12.74 percent of the total number of Taiwanese working overseas in 2015, according to the DGBAS, which said that the number of Taiwanese employees located overseas in 2015 fell 2,000, or 0.27 percent, from a year earlier, with male workers accounting for 56.10 percent of the total.

Taiwanese employees with a college degree or higher represented 72.52 percent of the total working overseas in 2015, while the 25-59 age group made up 84.69 percent of the total, the DGBAS added.

Among the Taiwanese working overseas, 63.2 percent stayed in a foreign country or region for 180 or more days, accounting for 63.2 percent of the total in 2015, while 36.8 percent stayed in a foreign country or region for 90-180 days, the DGBAS said.

(By Chen Cheng-wei and Frances Huang)ENDITEM/J