Because on one hand, I see Taiwan is super progressive, but on the other hand, people are always complaining that it’s still a very conservative society. So how do you see that?

Okay, okay. Maybe you have your last question. Okay, I have my last question. There’s only one last question, because there’s something I don’t know about Taiwan, I think or don’t understand about Taiwan. I think you would be a great person to answer that.

Do we still have time?

I see. Okay, that’s interesting.

I wasn’t allowed to ask a question, for example, because you said you’re a conservative anarchist. And I wanted to ask how that goes together, like being a minister of a full ministry or any conservative…

Yeah. And then I was kind of surprised to ask myself, does this come with high administration?

I see. And there was one thing that surprised me because a lot of my friends, Jonas, has been talking to you and they said it’s all very free and stuff. And when I asked for this interview, I sent in my question and twice they were actually half of ...

Yeah. Is this something you’re missing?

Okay. And are you missing that? I mean, having this, you know, because you always work in also civil rights.

Wednesday, sorry, where you met with citizens. Can you still do that?

I see. And how is this? Is this somehow affecting also your time? Because I knew that before you always had this, I think Tuesday where you met with the…

Exactly. Wow. Okay. How is it for you now having a ministry because you’ve been such a freewheeling minister flying around? How is that?

Because when you know you have a kid like that, you just wanted to be happy.

Wow. And that is probably also why they were probably super liberal, but that probably made them more liberal.

Oh, your parents told you?

Oh wow. So you knew about your condition as a child?

Oh wow.

Wow. And this one year when you had your heart disease, it meant that you had to stay at home for a year and then just emerge in the internet?

Oh really? Well, that’s nice.

About your condition. About your heart

But when did you, because I think what is quite interesting about your CV is also that you very much follow your own path, right? So when did you, do you think that was something that your parents gave you or that you always had or was it something you ...

Okay. That’s nice. Probably better than most Germans.

Your pronunciation is top.

Sounds good. So I think this is something that our readers would be really interested in, like your experiences there, and I think that was a year that really shaped you also, right?

Exactly. I guess you even speak, maybe you still speak German.

I’d like to go, if you allow, go back to your personal history because you lived in Germany also.

That would be nice.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That is very much the case. So they just want to, they’re not part of the club, so they don’t, yeah, that’s a very good way.

Yeah. (laughter)

And what do you think, why hasn’t China chased you there so far? I mean, whenever Taiwan has too much leverage in international relations, they would always find a way to get you out. Why haven’t they done so, so far?

And China does not want to chase you out of that, there’s no such attempts so far?

I mean, for you, being really into the topics and going to the summit for democracy and so on, you know about these trends. You’ve always worked in that, but at the same time, you’re limited because of the international status of Taiwan, right? You can’t have these government discussions, ...

So isn’t it a big problem that most of the governments, I mean, you have always been into this your whole life, but most of governments, they’re not really informed. So they take decisions too late, and they’re still not being taken. So what should be done about that?

And I mean, isn’t this totally crucial as you just mentioned AI? Because we don’t really have this data sharing agreement among democracies. But as China has such a huge pool of AI information, and we don’t really share the information they will always have, or they will have more ...

Exactly.

Exactly, yeah

But how could you actually, I mean it would really need also cooperation among countriesto make these civil social spaces bigger than Facebook because right now it’s great that you have that in Taiwan but this should be much bigger. Is there any, or is this something you want to ...

Exactly.

So how can you actually build up something in a space that also in Taiwan is already carved out, right? Most of the people are on Facebook and it is quite partisan and quite heated discussion.

And how do you, because you often speak also about that in the digital sphere you need to have something like town halls and meeting rooms. And this is, I mean, this is the big problem about polarization and filter bubbles and so on.

But do you generally have a problem with fatigue in democracy or is this nothing that troubles Taiwan?

So did you have a big bracket of society that was really anti-vax or refused that? Because this is what happened in Germany, for example. I think we were, I mean, as you know, Russian disinformation is very strong in Germany. And they actually sponsor a lot of French groups. ...

So it’s not a government official who answers the phone, but somebody from civil society.

Like on a practical, could you explain on a practical level how that works? So people have the information.

So it means you’re just kind of creating a different narrative. So you’re using the collective intelligence.

A super guinea pig. (laughter)

They were so strong in Germany.

We had them all.

Often they are so wild that you can’t, I mean, it doesn’t really, even if you say this is not true, people will think you say it’s not true because you’re part of the circle, blah, blah, blah. So how can you actually counter these?

How is it..because we also talked to Puma Shen, and he said he’s not really troubled about fake news, because that’s easy, but he’s really troubled about conspiracy theories, because there’s not really something you can do about it.