[laughs] It’s fine. Do you want to start? I don’t know how much you want recorded or whatnot, introduction or whatnot.
Usually we do a full transcription. We can, of course, remove part of it.
No, no. Let’s get radically transparent. [laughs] Just to give you an idea of what I’m looking for. I’m not a journalist. I’m a master’s degree student at Johns Hopkins. I am currently working towards my thesis. I graduate in May.
While I might try to publish papers in academic journals at Johns Hopkins, this isn’t CNN or BBC. I’m not Carl Miller or anything like that.
(laughter)
This is more just tell me if anything I’m talking about is wildly incorrect, if anything I say is wildly stupid, anything like that. Please be brutally, academically, honest with me.
My thesis right now, the scope is looking at new democracies. Right now, since Taiwan is my area of focus, I went to school in Tainan, and I’m sticking with what I know for now. I will be moving my scope around into places like Estonia and whatnot.
If you could help me understand the questions I’ve written out, what the current state of democracy is in Taiwan, what its threats are more specifically. Sorry, I should back up. Thank you so much for meeting me this week. I know this week…
I know this week is crazy.
It’s fine.
Right now, I’m working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to tour different LY members. Everyone is on that nice-to-meet-you-get-out type thing, so thank you so, so much.
It’s fine.
I’ll start off with some easy questions if you’re ready. I’m a little early.
No, it’s fine. I’m ready. That gives us 45 minutes at least so plenty of time.
Yes. Fantastic. I want to hear mostly from you. Over the past months, I’ve read dozens of your interviews. That won’t be a problem. Yes please, everything in your mind, help me understand, help guide my future research. Start off with some basic softball questions.
You’ve done a lot. You’ve done private sector in America, here, Sunflower Movement. I’m sure you’ve answered this question thousands of times. Of everything you’ve done in your career, what are you most proud of? What do you look back at this point and say, “That’s what I’m most happy with. That gives me the most joy”?
The fact that we can have this interview despite the election going on.
[laughs] Really?
Because I have really to be thoroughly nonpartisan, to be thoroughly delegating all the mechanism design to the people, internalizing the values on their side, for me to be able to sit like today in my office hour for the entire day without for a second worrying about the election. I think that in itself is something that I’m proud of.
Just to flesh it out, are you more referring to current state of democracy or more the current state of the transparency of the democracy?
Both. Basically, about how around this election, people feel that there’s a certain confidence in our resilience in the democratic process against all the various actors that want to sow discord. That’s the first thing.
The second is that people are in their positions and connecting very well with each other on rapid response mechanisms so that it doesn’t need a minister to do the firefighting role.
That, I think, is a testimony of how the various ministerial delegates, the participation offices, the rapid response teams and so on, that are already in place and fully aware of the situation. That gives me a lot of joy [laughs] that we can have this conversation. Otherwise I would be in some war room, right? [laughs]
Yeah, of course. I just have to say, this is so different than my yesterday. My yesterday was at DPP headquarters. I was meeting with Jason Shu.
Everybody is in a war room or another. [laughs]
I was waiting for the security door when the Uber dropped me off. I was just like, “No, I think I’m here.”
You walk in straight from the street.
I walk in straight from the street.
There’s no door, actually.
First thing I see is a gender-neutral bathroom, and I see you, and wave, and I’m here. [laughs] Sorry, I have to get my fanboy and stuff out.
It’s fine.
That was a great answer. That was a surprising answer. I was thinking something more cookie-cutter-politician, so I guess that was my fault.
Here’s a quick thought experiment. I think this can gauge a lot of your vision to me. It’s just an experiment. I thought it might be a little fun to make you a little uncomfortable with it. Let’s make you a dictator real quick. You are Chairman Tang. You have full control…
Generalissimo.
Generalissimo, yes.
(laughter)
The most feared generalissimo ever. You have full control over everything in Taiwan. You could shape it. You can do anything you want, but let’s say, in 20 years, you’re a benevolent generalissimo, and you go away. You let Taiwan return to whatever state you want it to be.
What does a perfect 2040 Taiwan look like to you? You still have all the history of Taiwan. You still have everything that’s happened now, the culture, the demographics. What does a perfect Taiwanese, either democracy, Taiwanese lack of government in general look like to you?
I would just [snaps] abdicate in a second.
I would just abdicate in a second, like step down from the generalissimo.
I figured that would be your answer. I actually wrote that, just like, “She’s going to say no.”
I’m not going to say no. I’m going to say, “Yeah, it’s fine.”
Say you could, it’s just for the thought experiment.
Put me on Wikipedia, and it’s done.
(laughter)
Add that to your credentials, Sunflower movement generalissimo for a day.
That’s right.
Just for the point of the experiment, basically, it was my fun way of asking, what do you see as the perfect Taiwanese democracy by 2040? What do you see as the perfect Taiwanese nation, Taiwanese government, by 2040?
There is no perfect democracy. Democracy, by definition, is a process – a social technology, if you want – to respond to an emergent situation around the world. Taiwan is not isolated from the rest of the world.
If we do a perfect Taiwan, or a Taiwan government, or a Taiwan democracy, that actually doesn’t necessarily respond to the world as-is at any given point. I think one of the main thing in Taiwan that I would like to keep, which makes me a conservative anarchist, is that we have various lineages, various cultures.
The fact that we have now around 20 national languages testifies that we are not having one culture dominating the other, but rather have a transcultural bedrock of democracy, which makes us more like Switzerland than anyplace else.
That is to say, people take the transcultural view on democracy, instead of a single culture dominating the other view of democracy. That gives me hope that we can keep the freedom of speech, assembly, civic space, and so on, which maximizes the freedom that people can explore, the various responses.
This is like, if you have a sufficiently diverse and inclusive biosphere, then no virus can eradicate. They can at most decimate, like take away one-tenth, of the population.
It’s like the hybrid vigor of society.
Yeah. I think we’re actually pretty good as-is. I really wouldn’t change that. That’s what makes me a conservative anarchist.
That, actually, it’s not a question I’ve written down, but it’s something I’m interested in. Just because, coming as an outsider, while in school, Taiwan is all I study. One of my teachers is the former director of AIT, David Keegan. I took his class on Taiwan.
Studying from the outside perspective, we hear these NCCU election studies trends on Taiwanese identity.
Oh, yeah, that’s very important.
We’re meeting with them, Nathan, tomorrow, I believe.
Oh, you will?
We see these trends of a growing identity in Taiwan, the Taiwanese ethnicity, the Hakka, the Minnan. For lack of a better term, is that legitimate? I can look at data, numbers, and whatnot, and I only get to be here two weeks to a month at a time while I’m a student. Do you feel that? Is that a real vigor amongst the diversity in Taiwan?
Definitely. I even wrote a small haiku about…
(laughter)
Well, not really haiku, just short verse.
On Taiwan Can Help?
Yeah, it’s called “Swirling Ocean and Beautiful Islands – A Transcultural Republic of Citizens,” which is actually a rendering of the Mandarin words. These eight are part of the Taiwan general history. These eight is a new interpretation on the formal name of the country.
Of course.
Basically, I think amidst flowers – or between flowers, literally – this transcultural part…
…yeah.
I think it’s definitely legitimate, and I would say it’s getting more legitimate by the day.
That just makes me happy, in general. You can look at numbers all day, but when you actually hear from someone a respected idea…No, that’s good to hear. I have a handful of questions on threat analysis to democracy. This is the happy time, and then get the other stuff.
I’ve read in a couple of your interviews your pushes for assistive technology, technology that can help integrate either technologically illiterate or less-technological literate individuals into this new digital democracy that you’re…
While conserving social norms.
Yes. While conserving social norms. Can you give me some tangible steps, or any progress that you’re either currently working on or that has recently come out, just because this is something…? I’ll just admit my ignorance on it. I’ve read about it, but I haven’t looked into exactly what has been done so far.
Most of the talk I give, I give the idea of Taiwan-developed, MIT Media Lab-inspired persuasive electric vehicles, or PEVs, and they literally had their sandbox here, right here.
If you arrived in the past three years at the right time of the month, you’ll see these self-driving vehicles just roaming around here in the Social Innovation Lab. They interact with the market, which is literally the Jianguo Flower Market nearby.
People really do work out social norms of “How can we co-domesticate with self-driving tricycles?” People may use them as trollies, shopping baskets that follows people around. They may look at it as not a transportation device in general but rather a recreation device, or tour guide. There’s people who want it to be used that way.
When it’s used as transportation, people feel like it’s best give…For example, in the middle of the night, the metro has stopped, so maybe it could be serve as a kind of software-defined metro and things like that.
The point here is when it was really slow in speed and couldn’t really harm anyone, people just experience with these creatures knowing that they can work with students in Taipei Tech and change any part of the hardware and software, and essentially co-create their sandbox proposals to the site in Taipei City.
I think in a couple month, Taipei City will start its first genuine self-driving vehicle sandbox.
In a couple months?
In a couple months. That’s the self-driving bus in the Xinyi bus lane. It incorporated a lot of learnings that we have here about how to read the traffic lights, how to yield to first elderly people and then children, instead of in Boston, which is first children and then elderly.
(laughter)
Our priorities are a little different. [laughs]
Yeah, a little bit different. That’s what I mean social…
We’ll just make that a culture difference, yeah.
(laughter)
That’s right.
“Elderly, uh, don’t care.” No. [laughs]
Right. That then also influenced, for example, I think in the Love River in Kaohsiung, other than…
God, I haven’t been there in so long.
…also doing solar-powered self-driving boats.
Yes, I’ve seen that. Yeah.
I think self-driving vehicle is a really good example, because the private-sector investors know, if within the one year of safe sandbox experiments, the society doesn’t like the idea, then it will be like reverse lottery, because they will lose a lot and everybody gain a little bit of understanding. [laughs]
If they manage to work with the society to, through participatory design, a way to co-domesticate, to integrate into society, then their envisioned mode of transportation, including the religion involved, will become the official ones.
It incentivizes people to invent social innovation, not just industry innovation, by working with the people.
Again, pardon my ignorance, but has there been any…I know you’re part of the government now at this point, but has there been any government reception to this? Is this something that’s completely OKed by city governments? It’s everything, they’re good to go, green light?
Certainly.
That’s awesome. Actually, I have questions later about the aging crisis that Taiwan’s facing. I’m sure this is getting fast-tracked.
It’s a large part of it. I haven’t been showing you the exoskeletons, which is a little bit more sci-fi. [laughs]
Yeah, you set your stages. Once this works, then you put out the exoskeletons. [laughs] That’s awesome. Now, to get into the, not less happy, but more threatening. Your predecessor, Jaclyn Tsai, and you’ve gone on record saying that she’s not really Kuomintang. I agree with that assessment.
No, she’s not really Kuomintang.
No, not at all, culturally.
Neither is Simon Chang, for that matter.
Yes, I completely agree with that as well. You also stated that your assignment is part of an administrative agenda and acknowledged how much of your agenda is a culture change, which will take time, obviously. There’s an election coming up on Saturday. I don’t know if you know. [laughs]
Of course. How much of your progress and how much of your vision is tied to Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, the current administration, and god willing, reelection administration? If it’s President Han come Sunday, when we wake up Sunday, how much of your progress, how much of all of this, remains and continues?
Everything.
Everything?
He promised to the people that, if he becomes president, the e-petition threshold, which is now 5,000 people, will become 3,000, making it easier for people to do e-petitions.
You’re no worry at all? Whatever happens Saturday, it doesn’t affect you.
When William Lai ran against Dr. Tsai in the DPP primary, his agenda, again, is that, “Dr. Tsai is doing very well on open government, but I will do a national open government plan,” and so on. It turns out we are now doing a national open government plan. [laughs]
The Overton window keeps moving in your favor.
That’s right.
That’s not as troubling as I thought it would be.
Not at all.
This is resilient, is what you’re saying. This has, Taiwan itself, not just this administration, is moving…
This is like a ratchet. If people get used to the idea that they can do, say, participatory budget or the e-petitions, there really is no politician that will risk saying that, “Oh, let’s go back to authoritarianism.”
Saying, “No.”
(laughter)
That’s awesome. That’s a much more uplifting answer than I was thinking. It’s great and all, me studying it, my generation, and our generation studying this concept of radical transparency, digital democracy, and whatnot.
However, a certain politician recently quoted at a rally said, “It used to be God who decided the leader. Now, it’s the cyber army.” Have you witnessed any societal pushback to innovation? I know change is always met with a certain level of resistance.
That’s pretty true across the board. I’m just trying to gauge the situation currently here in Taiwan. Have you experienced any suspicion or fear from any elements of the public about the concepts of radical transparency and digital democracy?
There’s a running gag that Audrey Tang, Digital Minister, can use her brain…
Tinfoil hatters? Yeah.
…to amplify psychic energy, right? [laughs]
I saw a story. Just a quick side note. We were pretty busy, but I got to the gym last night. I check my phone, and it was 9:30. The first thing I see is you having dinner with Freddy Lim, who is just a personal hero of mine.
I get real fangirly about him. I was checking the comments. I was like, “Oh, let’s see what deep conversation they’re having about this.” It’s just tinfoil hat memes all the time. [laughs]
That’s right. Freddy said with a completely straight face that, “We know that you can block it with really heavy metal.”
(laughter)
I saw him. I need to actually rewatch it all, because I was busy when I saw it. I was like, “No, no, no.” So heavy metal blocks that.
By heavy metal, he mean lead. He mean lead.
Oh, yeah. I thought that was a music pun.
He said that, if you listen to heavy metal music and just exercise your neck, because they throw away their hair all the time. Exercise your neck, your neck will become very strong and muscular. Then you can don the lead helmet, which will block electromagnetic waves, and completely in a straight face.
(laughter)
Which is really funny.
God, I hope I run into him while I’m here. Anyways, has there been any pushback?
Of course, that reflects a social tension. It reflects a social tension that, somehow, with algorithm or with whatever, people’s thought could be manipulated without their being even aware about it.
Tinfoil hat, of course, doesn’t quite work. They only amplify electromagnetic effects. [laughs] Physically, it doesn’t work.
I also think it’s a tongue-in-cheek joke amongst your supporters.
Of course. Then the idea that algorithmic dependency, like the social media, AI-based, I will say even parasitic feed that people feel that their emotion is being somehow manipulated by artificial intelligence, algorithms, and so on, that is a real fear.
That’s reflected in those jokes. It’s not personal. I never take it personally, but that is something that people are gradually becoming aware of. It’s the same in the US. After the Cambridge Analytica, there is now presidential candidates that centers around her campaign based on this idea.
Has there been any tangible manifestations of this, outside of meme culture and whatnot? Which, again, I think is mostly just by your supporters as a joke. Has there been any either, has any LY members that I’m aware of harnessed this fear?
Or any LY members that push back against these concepts of radical transparency. I’m just thinking like, again, this is as an outside. I grew up in the rural south in America. If someone said, “A conservative anarchist has a position in government, and she’s pushing radical transparency,” much less a transgender one, I could see heads exploding across my hometown.
Is there anything like that here? Any group either taking the American model, more conservative/rural areas, that just are highly opposed to this?
No, because I think people understand very clearly that by transparency, we mean making the state transparent to citizens, and nobody’s against that. People are afraid that citizens are being made transparent to the state. That is the direction that people worry.
I make it really clear to all my visitors and so on that they of course get a chance to edit the transcript, that they of course don’t have to abide by this, particularly if they want to talk with my colleagues instead of me.
It’s only under events and meetings that I chair that has this protocol. I think by and large people understand that I’m not representing really anyone. I’m just presenting my own idea about this in the conversations.
I think after three years, there’s less worry about me doing the reverse kind of transparency, but there is, of course, a lot of worry about, say, Facebook, or other global multinationals are doing this kind of surveillance.
I think nowadays, it’s not about open government. The term open government is safe. It is not linked in any way to state surveillance. State surveillance, of course, is still something that people worry about.
Of course. Yeah, especially in Taiwan. In America, that sounds like something people are scared of in the abstract. In Taiwan, you were alive during the martial law, so…
It’s a real fear in the back of people’s minds.
Right. People keep evoking the martial law era returns to remind each other that we must not go back to that era.
This is kind of a big question. This is something that I’m seeing both to my delight and to my annoyance that is just rapidly increasing in publication in America. There’s this abrupt interest in Taiwan over the last month.
I think it’s framed in the perspective of if China meddles in Taiwan’s election, then they’ll meddle in…kind of a self-serving policy on that.
Not necessarily a bad idea. [laughs]
No, I’ve on the one hand been very happy there’s an explosion of reporting on Taiwan amongst major news networks. It’s also self-serving.
To get into that question, specifically in terms of election, which…We can talk about digital democracy and radical transparency and these tenets of democracy. Elections are still a vital tenet of democracy, obviously – the legitimacy and will of the people.
Which do you think is a bigger threat to Taiwan elections? Is it foreign interference or domestic malicious actors?
These two work closely together…
Of course.
…and collaborate. Really, it’s a mutually reinforcing relationship, because the more that internal discord is being sown by internal or domestic people, the more of a opportunistic window for the foreign powers to interfere and to essentially amplify those divisive ideas.
There is a very public report about what Russia did to the US election. You will see that they are not actually getting any side. All the sides of rhetorics, but just making, radicalizes them, to make them more polarizing.
I don’t think radicalizing them, per se, is a problem, because from the report, we can see that they were doing pretty narratives in the community building phase. Genuinely pretty good things to build trust and then abuse that trust.
Again, where I grew up, that was a lot of my people, if you will. It was especially troubling. You don’t see, because there’s this philosophy when discussing disinformation that attribution isn’t really important.
That it’s a distinction without a difference, where it’s this coming from Russia. It doesn’t really matter if the tensions and the schisms are already there. Do you ascribe to that? It doesn’t actually matter if it’s a united front effort if the tension’s already there?
I think attribution matters insofar that it teach people how to do attribution. A full attribution, done publicly, is an educational material in media competency. That is to say, because in Taiwan, broadband as a human right, everybody can start a live stream any time.
Everybody is media, in that sense, but people don’t generally have the full training of a journalist before they can just push a button and become media. Full attribution is useful insofar that people learn that whatever information source that they receive, it’s good to ask the right set of questions as a journalist would to do the due diligence, source checking, and fact checking, as a journalist would.
If the journalist doesn’t share their tool kit, it makes a, like people nevertheless will just spread whatever information that they heard. If the journalists do share the tool kit and allow more democratic, participatory fact checking, for example, with institutional media, then they collaboratively doing attribution.
Everybody learns something about how journalism works. I think it’s great education-wise, but I don’t think it is, by itself, useful as just purely us versus them tool.
That actually perfectly leads into my next question, which is what can be done about disinformation in Taiwan? What level of solution do you think should be most promoted? I know you have, fortunately, there are people like you.
People are receptive to you, that things like Taiwan Fact Check Center are promoted. Facebook just agreed to doing work with them, which is amazing. They had their first outfit of major takedowns. Do you think the future of Taiwan, and how you can protect, or if anything, solve disinformation to render it useless, is that a government level? Is that a societal level? Is that an educational level?
I know, in the past, you’ve done things like – I forget – I think it was called Invasion of the Fake News you did with AIT. Is that how these things are solved, or are they solved through government action? Say, anti-infiltration bills.
It’s solved exactly as how spam is solved. Spam is never really “solved.” If you look into your junk mail folder, they are still there.
(laughter)
That’s a good point, because then I see them, like, [scoffs]. I roll my eyes at spam now, which 10 years ago, it was a real problem.
10 years ago, like 20 years ago or such, Bill Gates was saying, “We need to charge a postal stamp to each email, otherwise email is broken.” That’s how bad it was at the time. Spam is solved. Again, in some jurisdictions, there is laws around spam, unsolicited email.
In Taiwan, up to this point, there is no law pertaining to spam. Spam in Taiwan is solved as it’s solved elsewhere, through all the levels that you just mentioned, to make it non-economic for people to keep sending spam.
It is by people having the awareness that there is spam going on. People have the agency of voluntarily flag something as spam and donating it to Spamhaus, the international Spamhaus connection, which the major ISPs, Donghwa Telecom and so on, participated in, so they do not become unwilling or unwitting perpetrators of spam, being open proxies or whatever.
Then the collaboration with the major multinationals, email hosters, Gmail, Hotmail, and such, that they will use the indication from Spamhaus to move incoming email into the junkmail box, and so on, and so forth.
It’s an ecosystem, and everybody does their part. It’s not any single place that become a generalissimo-like role that tell others what to do. It’s still multi-stakeholder.
How applicable do really think that is to disinformation? When I say disinformation, when everyone says disinformation, what they’re most likely talking about specifically is social media campaigns and whatnot.
Disinformation’s been around, information operations, have been around for centuries, for millennia. This is just the new, hot venue for it. Are you thinking that the co-opting of social media for the purpose of disinformation campaigns, that will go the way of spam?
That will just one day become an eye roll. That will go into the ash heap of history with the Nigerian prince scam and whatnot, but do you think that it’ll return back to united front efforts at that point, once social media is rendered safe spot and useless to disinformation?
I think, like this year, with Facebook publishing the precision targeting advertisements in a radically transparent fashion, and as open data for the civil society to analyze and use, they stop being the preferred venue.
That’s just like that. People go to all sort of different video websites or whatever, instead of Facebook. It’s not that they become less capable. It’s just that it stopped being a viral [laughs] environment for the virus of the mind to grow. That is to say, the antibodies, both of the participants, the individuals decide using Facebook as well as in the algorithm side, makes it less friendly for the virus to grow.
I think that’s…As you said, it’s just a matter of time that we will see social media and disinformation as more orthogonal concepts. “This is social media. There’s still some disinformation, but it’s just like with all my due respect to African countries…”
(laughter)
“…information packages.” It’s important actually, in Internet governance, that we do not move to block entire jurisdictions from sending email, even though we have conclusive proof that their open proxies and whatever are being used for email, because that would be taking away your human right to communicate.
Just having these principles drove real innovations instead of quick solutions that nevertheless advances the freedom of speech and other essential freedoms. That is, again, a philosophy that we take.
You sound very optimistic about this. Like I said, this is just as hot a topic.
As a spam war veteran.
(laughter)
I’ve seen this.
Maybe that’s the problem. There’s too many journalists who are 25 or whatnot that are just ranting, “This is the end of the world. This is the end of Facebook.”
Yeah, there’s competing philosophies even in America that this is the next wave of information operations, and then there’s the eye roll campaign. You fall more amongst the eye roll, which is like, “This is something we’re going to laugh at in 10 years,” correct?
I was just asking that to give me hope. [laughs] Thank you for that. Now to a previous topic I brought up. In studying Taiwan, I believe personally one of the greatest crises or the greatest threats that’s coming up is the population crisis.
By 2026, Taiwan will be in the classification of a super-aged society. This might be more traditional thinking in my threat profile of this, but do you worry about a deficit of innovation capital as the younger generation is no longer being replenished at the same rates?
You’re not going to be less innovative just because you’re getting older, but there is something that comes with a new generation of people that have grown up assuming this technological level and then progressing it, and then the next generation assumes a technological level and progresses it.
Do you worry about that at all as Taiwan generation…?
I think the birth rate around our region of earth is not really declining. If we are more open toward our nearby jurisdictions, then there’s no such problem.
The ones suffering the most from the aging population – Japan, for example – are incidentally the least open on their visa programs. Of course, they’re changing now, but just a decade ago, it’s like almost impossible as a young East Asian person to get a citizenship in Japan.
It’s just impossible. Now, of course, it’s becoming easier and easier. Because they are also becoming aware of their aging population and infrastructure, but of course, it takes time for the brand to evolve.
I think while we have introduced the gold card, for example, which is a pretty good success, and more friendly visa, residency, and dual citizenship – if you contribute to Taiwan, you can keep your passport and get a new one from Taiwan.
All these, I think, are essentially signals to the expat community that Taiwan is a perfect destination for you to occasionally be here and to work with people, and as you said, innovate.
We also sent this as a message to the Taiwanese diaspora saying that if you want to make a social impact with your ideas, you can convince your colleagues to all move back to Taiwan, as Ethan Tu did, the founder of PTT, and also an inventor of YouTube and so on.
We have quite a few colleagues that say that because they have children now or whatever, they prefer Taiwan as a safe and healthy in both terms of healthcare and food…
(laughter)
…and psychology to grow up.
I laugh because my girlfriend’s Taiwanese and lives in DC with me. We have this conversation where she’s like, “If you want kids, we got to get back to Taiwan.” [laughs]
That’s right.
No, that diaspora aspect, I see it every day in Taiwan, and…
If she goes back, then there’s one more Taiwanese citizen.
(laughter)
Yeah. Are you just making me an honorary Taiwanese at this point? You guys have other high-profile people, like Enoch Wu, which is this perfect hero of the diaspora when it comes back. It was just weird.
We were at AIT yesterday, the American Institute of Taiwan, and we were supposed to be there talking about the elections. One guy in the back was just like, “Oh, yeah, someone you guys need to watch is Enoch Wu.”
I was like, “I have anyways,” just because he’s the hot, new thing amongst young Taiwanese and whatnot. No, that’s an incredible story of just going, making it back at Goldman Sachs, if I’m correct.
That’s right.
Yale education.
After 10 years.
Then coming back to serve in Special Forces, that’s awesome. That’s great. You see that at the high level. I see that with my colleagues at Global Taiwan Institute. It’s just full of Taiwanese Americans and Taiwanese working in DC coming back.
You’re hopeful for that. You think that the replenishing next generation will not be necessarily two Taiwanese parents, a Taiwanese child, born and raised in Taiwan. It’s going to be innovators from around the world that are just encouraged to come back, because Taiwan makes it a haven for innovation?
Yeah, and our Ministry of Interior’s voting promotion film came from Ray Shaw, who came from Ukraine. [laughs] She has full citizenship now, and she’s going to vote her first voting in Taiwan.
That’s actually an interesting point I was going to bring up. In terms of scope, you mentioned your region. You mentioned…
The birthrate of our region.
Yeah. Japan, East Asia, and I know through the New Southbound Policy, there’s been integration with ASEAN as well. Not to suggest your scope is small, because I know that’s just not the case with anything you talk about.
Are you keeping that scope regionally, or do you think people will come from Germany, come from Ukraine, come from Latin America, all over?
They’re already coming, but the main thing, to be very honest, is that while everybody agree that we need to move toward an English, frankly, just everyday life, we’re not yet at the point where everybody agree that we should just make English our working language or one of our official languages.
The hope is that, by 10 years from now, by 2030, we will be able to get to that place.
Are you a proponent of that, of the English working…?
Definitely. Now, we have some 20 national languages. Having 21 in the future? It’s fine.
(laughter)
It’s just that small language, English.
It’s just the small English language, yes. Because all the EU countries do recognize English as a working language, that makes it much easier…
Of course, the language of business and the language of technology.
…for young people from the EU to then consider Taiwan seriously as a permanent stay or US citizenship destination. Before we do that, we recognize the difficulty of doing so.
To make it more turnkey, obviously, would make it more encouraged. I would love to say diplomacy would be enough to bring everyone, but no. If you’re moving to business, the language barrier, cultural barrier, all of these things would obviously make this an easier turnkey to encourage someone to up and move from Berlin that here.
I think that’s part of the core platform for Freddie and also Enoch, actually. We have quite a few, well, hopefully MPs that take this view.
(laughter)
I’m running up against my time, and I don’t want to keep you. This is returning back to happy type of conversation. Moving to the future, could you explain in detail, or talk about in detail, the Taiwan Open Government National Action Plan?
I know that you stated it will take place immediately following the reelection, and for anyone listening…
The press release is out.
Yes. For anyone that happens to be listening or reading this, the National Development Council has a really good outline of what it is. I just want to hear – again, if anyone is reading this – to hear you explain it, you showcase it, and pitch it, what exactly it is.
The OGP, which is the Open Government Partnership, is a series of action plans and commitments from all the democracies. People can only get their jurisdiction to join OGP by proving that they have democratic values.
This is one of those, I wouldn’t say it’s minilateral, because it’s not very mini now. It’s multilaterals that have a, what we call a, hybrid multi-stakeholder model.
In the OGP, the steering committee is exactly half state representative and half civil society people. Even in the national level, there is the multi-stakeholder forum, which is, again, half civil service and half citizens, like civil society.
I think this public social sector co-governance is definitely the shape we’re seeing on pretty much all the multi-stakeholder global shapes. We see that in the UN FCCC. We see that in the UN IGF.
We see all the more traditional multilateral entities, such as the UN, having to adopt multi-stakeholder approaches, especially for things like climate change that doesn’t really respect borders. CO2 doesn’t really….
(laughter)
…respect borders.
You can have your opinion. That’s fine, but really…
(laughter)
That’s right. In any case, what I’m trying to say is that OGP provides Taiwan a really good platform, because whether on the multi-stakeholder side or on the multilateral side, we have plenty to contribute.
When we have a lot to contribute, we don’t quite care which side of the table we’re sitting. We’re basically saying we are a partner instead of a whatever they try to bill us at.
I participated in the Paris OGP, 2016, and delivered a ending keynote. I said that “I know that Taiwan means different things to different people here, but what my main point is that Taiwan can help, and we are happy to join as a partner.”
Taiwan Can Help™.
(laughter)
#TaiwanCanHelp.
Put that #TaiwanCanHelp.
That’s right.
(laughter)
I think especially now the OGP’s corresponding to the 16s of the SDGs is also part of the global sustainable goal movement.
I think while traditionally, the more open-government or human rights-based NGOs will base in Bangkok or in Hong Kong – these are the two most popular destinations – somewhat unfortunately, they consider Taipei now a better home for obvious political reasons…
Yeah, of course.
…concerning those two cities. I think this regional leadership role is a new development, and that we’re really happy to share with the likes of the South Korean government. I think I can get the Japanese more interested in this, but so far…
(laughter)
…they’re still testing the waters.
Is that a hot take here? Japan going to be on board? [laughs]
Yeah, I think for the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, which used to be a bilateral – like AIT mobile thing – especially around media literacy and increasingly cybersecurity, as of last year, Japan become a co-host. It’s not just Japan sending people to the GCTF, but rather Japan hosts GCTF once in a while. It’s a rotating basis.
We’re forming a minilateral based on the existing GCTF. It’s not a prediction-type thing. We know that Japan is – they’re interested.
You perceive it as being more…For example, those AIT joint cyber efforts and whatnot with…
That’s exactly right.
You just see more of that happening, and so bilateral, trilateral…
Previously, when Japan wanted to do anything like that, their training framework and so on – they do it through the Japan-US bilateral, and less so in a triangular fashion.
With this triangular minilaterals in GCTF, we’re seeing much more opportunities for collaboration in this shape.
That makes my China studies brain a little itchy. Are you hopeful of a willingness of something like this? This is obviously a new and more innovative push, but in the past, for example, things like the World Health Organization – there’s these roundabout…where Taiwan could enter, but…
That’s a pure multilateral. It’s not multi-stakeholder.
Yes, of course, and this is also areas where the PRC has a say, has a pressure. I’m sure, not to take a more pessimistic side, but I’m sure pushing open-government forms like this, China will still not – PRC will still not…
They don’t have a seat yet.
I know they don’t have a seat.
[laughs]
That’s why I’m trying to word this favorably, but there’s still levers and pressures. They can discourage other members from joining this. Do you think…?
…this’ll be something that they could pressure, like say if Japan wants to be more open and do a…
…partner?
Open-government partnership? No, because as I said, this is part of SDG 16, and the PRC have signed the agenda for 2030, including SDG 16, meaning within 10 years, they agreed to be bound by the sustainability agenda.
The 16th being that they have to have a fair access, representative, rule of law, whatever system by 2030. How they get there…Of course, they have their ways to get there, I’m sure, but they cannot go out and say “We’re against SDG 16” while supporting the other 16 SDGs. That just doesn’t make sense.
In all the UN-related venues – which I entered quite a few, sometime in the flesh, sometime as a robot – I have never heard once that anybody from the PRC take this anti-SDG view.
What I’m trying to say is that, in pure, multilateral, of course, the dynamic you say is at play. In hybrid and in pure multi-stakeholder, and if they correspond to the SDGs, there is no legitimacy theory that PRC can say that say, “Oh, we somehow want to prevent people from contributing to the global goals.”
OK, that’s fine. You quickly mentioned a democratic, like a litmus test. You said, if they show democratic values, they’ll be invited and open to this.
There’s multiple value tests, like Freedom House…
Freedom, yeah, OK. You would just defer to these already-established “freedom tests,” if you will? Amnesty International and whatnot.
Yeah, sure.
My, again, outsider brain, I was just like, “Oh, that sounds like power.” That sounds like something that could be abused, to be like, “Oh, under my democratic values, you don’t qualify, or you do qualify.”
It’s hard to…
(laughter)
…to infiltrate…
Last question, hard question. [laughs]
…infiltrate all those human right organizations. Also, what I’m trying to say is that they’re at least not overtly against this direction. They’re just saying that they’re developing with Chinese characteristics. That is important, because that means that this still holds currency.
Sorry, I think I’ve gone over a little bit.
No, it’s fine.
Just real quick, again, revisiting my purpose of meeting with you today. Now that we’ve felt each other out, and you understand where I’m looking at, what I believe to be a threat and whatnot, tell me why I’m stupid.
Tell me what is wrong about things that, as an outsider, I believe are a threat, I believe are valuable, or I believe are not valuable. Is there something I’m missing as an outsider?
No, I don’t see anything missing. I think your frame of analysis is broadly agree, at least with how I look at Taiwan, too. I think there’s two points I would like to add to our conversation.
Of course.
The first thing is that you mentioned something about the polls or whatever, mentioning a Taiwanese identity. I would qualify that, saying that is an identity around democratic principles and process.
Basically, you may hear in your research the term 亡國感, or the sense of impending doom, or mango feeling.
Mango, yeah.
The sense of impending doom is actually something that has been used in the authoritarian rhetorics before, during the martial law era, with the South Sea blood script.
[laughs] It’s not a new term, but this time around, this term refer to completely different things. Previously, that term summons a nationalism that is exclusionary, that is generalissimo-like. This time, this summons a term, what I term as 公民之國, or a republic of citizens.
The more rights and participation a citizen has, the less sense of impending doom they feel. This is a participatory way, like deepening democracy, to build this identity. As contrast to the previous authoritarian one, which is obeying generalissimo’s command to trade a sense of safety.
When I see things like – just in quick academic writing, they’ll say Taiwanese identity – usually, what you’re talking about is Hakka, Minnan, Paiwan. You’re saying that should, while hold value for self-identity and who you yourself as, that should not as nearly as much value of these concepts of democratic openness and independence, versus…
No, I mean, yes, Ray Shaw from Ukraine going to vote as a Taiwanese, that is not included in the more ethnicity piece.
It’s straight data, numbers. That’s not going to be, yeah.
Yeah. I think this kind of, that bring me to my second point, which is the transculturalism. I think there is a lot of sense of freedom in Taiwan that people, a high sense of freedom. It’s not just freedom to travel to other countries, but freedom, even within Taiwan, to travel to different cultures and not to be bound by the same Minnan, Hakka, or whatever culture that one is raised in.
Rather, being able to, say, move maybe just a couple hundred kilometers into the indigenous places or to the places from Indonesia or from the Philippines gather and things like that. Then just experience the same society, but through the lens of a different culture.
Looking back at one’s own culture in a transcultural view. This kind of transcultural view, which I render as amidst flowers, or between flowers, is actually a term that goes way back to the Warring States that says various civilizations are different, various flowers. If we adopt a common social norm to listen to one another, which they call rights, so the rights of Joe. [laughs]
If people agree to treat each other through the idea of ren, which is hard to translate into…
(laughter)
…it’s OK to live in a transcultural fashion. As people who are philosophers during the Springs and Autumn said, the thing about Ping Zhou, under heaven, is not defined by whether you use ideographic characters or not. They’re whether you treat each other with the right rights.
Again, don’t let me put anything in your mouth. You’re saying that’s more than it means to be Taiwanese. Taiwanese doesn’t mean, “I’m Menon. My family came over in 1668. They all stayed in this area…”
It’s important to remember that lineage and respect it, but not being restricted by that lineage to somehow take a us versus them stance with other cultures.
A lot of transculturalism you can see in the Taiwan designers, fashion designers as well as other arts, visual arts, and so on. You see a kind of creativity as caused by, as I usually like to say, the tectonic plates running into one another…
[laughs]
…and raise them two centimeters every year. That’s a thing of creating new culture out of cultural tensions, not pretending cultural tension doesn’t exist, nor of choosing one culture to the detriment of the other.
That is, again, also a transcultural identity, which is a reinterpretation. As you can see, I chose 在花之中, amidst flowers, which is a decidedly more 天下文明 point of view than a 夷夏之防 point of view.
That’s the two interpretations that co-exist during the Warring States. The 夷夏 point of view is definitely what PRC is adopting now. I say this without any judgment.
They would probably agree. Certain people, aside from public.
They probably would agree when they say 实现中华民族伟大复兴. That’s taking a 夷夏 point of view, especially versus the US nowadays.
(laughter)
In Taiwan, we take more of a 天下文明 point of view.
I think I ran way over my time.
It’s fine.
I’m really sorry, but thank you so much. This is a great way to start my Wednesday, because I’m going to meeting with suits all the rest of my day. That was amazing. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Oh, I have my card here. If I could have yours.
Sure. Feel free to stay in touch.
I most certainly will. Thank you so much.
Cheers.