Interesting. Maybe you can compare. What are you doing differently than your former boss, Jaclyn Tsai?
It was, I think, Jaclyn Tsai who, can I say, brought you into government or who established the first contact?
By now, you have quite a reputation.
Maybe you would get fewer invitations because you don’t have that cool-sounding title.
Interesting. You’re basically saying, if you weren’t Taiwan’s digital minister, your life wouldn’t be that different?
You don’t care about honorary titles?
I know.
Yeah?
Really? How can you not care about being a minister or not?
You wanted to stay, absolutely? Or were you thinking about…
Why?
You wonder why?
It sounds like, “I would rather not, but I have to.”
Ah, in that sense.
You just said, “I’m still attending the cabinet meeting.” What does that mean, “still”?
Yeah. [laughs]
Because you had meetings with Doug Atsel.
Because you have meetings?
When are you here?
I know they came in last year.
Oh, I see. You have the…
Yeah. Do you have a cup of water maybe?
I was more talking to you about the difference between the Taiwanese concept of the wise city versus the Western concept of smart cities, which are often just technology-driven cities.
Is this concept really very much different in practice as well from the Western concept of smart city?
Do you know how they say it in China in Chinese.
…is the wise city. That’s very interesting.
Usually, the translation for smart city in Chinese…
It’s really different?
Is that different from the smart city?
Wise city in Chinese? How do you say that in Chinese?
Still, like the smart city, this label is very much used in Taiwan as well, for example, right?
Maybe we can forget my structure and continue with the flow of the conversation.
That’s very interesting. I guess you don’t like the term smart city at all, right?
That’s very interesting. I think the way many governments and also experts understand digital and digitalization is basically to put everything on the Internet and computers…
You’re a lower-case minister. Still then, normally, you would preach something, which would, in this case as digital minister, I would suspect would be, “Hey guys, we should use this occasion to push for a digital payment system.”
What does that mean?
Sorry?
That doesn’t sound necessarily like what you would imagine if somebody thinks of you as a digital minister.
What did you suggest yesterday?
Did they come to you? Why? What do they want to have from you?
What is your role exactly in that kind of meeting?
The ministry meeting, the Ministry of Economy.
Before.
I want to go back to one thing you mentioned here at this meeting yesterday, about digital development I think you said.
Even if you say you don’t change things – maybe I’m not precise enough – you want to change the culture, right?
Of course, but you’re here for something. You have a reason?
You don’t change things?
Like those people. They are basically like, “But it’s still politics. She’s on the government. She doesn’t really have a budget. She doesn’t really have staff. That’s what you need if you really want to change things.” Of course, you don’t agree.
OK.
