Ima Sanchís: How old are you?

Audrey Tang: 38.

Ima Sanchís: Were you born in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: I’m born in Taipei City.

Ima Sanchís: …in Taiwan. Where do you live?

Audrey Tang: On the Internet.

Ima Sanchís: …on the Internet.

Ima Sanchís: You’re currently the Minister of Digital of Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Yes, since October 2016.

Ima Sanchís: Are you happy?

Audrey Tang: Yes, I’m very happy.

Audrey Tang: I just had a video conference this afternoon with my mother, who is a journalist.

Audrey Tang: She said that this is the most happy foreign mission that I have done in the past four years that she has seen because this time, I travel by myself in my individual capacity, not with a entourage of consulate people. [laughs]

Ima Sanchís: Do you live alone?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: I live in this dormitory, [laughs] a large building.

Audrey Tang: 16 floor. This is a large building where all the ministers, whether they’re in the legislative, the judiciary, the collective, the examination, or the administration, all live in the same community building. In a sense I live alone but, in another sense, I live with all the other ministers.

Ima Sanchís: Your parents were in the Tiananmen revolution.

Audrey Tang: My dad was there until the 1st of June in 1989.

Audrey Tang: ‘89, and he covered the Tiananmen protest until the very last week.

Ima Sanchís: Were you there in the square?

Audrey Tang: No, I was too young to travel. [laughs] I was eight years old.

Ima Sanchís: What do you remember of that time?

Audrey Tang: I remember my dad sending me the facsimiles, the fax machines, which is the first application of digital photography at the time. I remember viewing on television these new ideas of digital photography that was transmitted through phone lines for the first time.

Audrey Tang: I think Kodak just invented that idea of a camera transmitting a photographic image through telephone lines at that year. That’s how we get, for example, the Techman coverage from the Tiananmen Square.

Audrey Tang: Later on my dad also went to Berlin, when the Wall fell. I remember him sending me a small plastic bag and with it a part of the Berlin Wall that broke. It was a very happening year.

Ima Sanchís: You said a week after that your father went to Berlin?

Audrey Tang: No, no, it’s the same year. Later that year.

Ima Sanchís: If you can just speak phrase by phrase, and then I can translate that part?

Audrey Tang: OK.

Ima Sanchís: Speak a little bit slower, please. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: OK, sorry. [laughs]

Ima Sanchís: It’s OK.

Audrey Tang: I remember that my father went to Beijing to cover the Tiananmen protest. I remember him coming back on the 1st of June and looking very troubled, and also with him a lot of footage.

Audrey Tang: I also remember him going to Germany to also study for his PhD thesis. That’s what bring us as his family to Germany to live for a year when he do his PhD on Tiananmen.

Ima Sanchís: You all went to Berlin?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: No. My dad was in Berlin in ‘91. We went to Germany, not Berlin. We went to Saarland, near the French border on the south of Germany, bordering on France at ‘92. My dad went to by himself first, and then we joined him for a year in ‘92.

Ima Sanchís: Briefly, what is your political ideology, feeling?

Audrey Tang: My political feeling.

Ima Sanchís: What is your political feeling? Where do you situate yourself politically? What do you think has to be done? Not specifically who you want to vote.

Ima Sanchís: What do you defend? What are your beliefs? What is your political sentiment?

Audrey Tang: I call myself a poetician, meaning that I mostly write poetry, not manifesto.

Audrey Tang: Poetic, it’s hard to translate. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: For example, I wrote this very short lines saying that swirling ocean and beautiful islands in a transcultural republic of citizens, and that in poetic form is roughly my sentiment, what I’m working in the poetic for.

Ima Sanchís: She believes that you defend that the citizen should intervene or participate in the politics.

Audrey Tang: Citizens are always participating in the politics one way or another. What I am trying to make is that I’m more like a channel between the top down political institution and more peer to peer social sector, making sure that we can, like a building have vertical component and horizontal component, so that they support each other rather than cancel each other.

Audrey Tang: The institutions tend to be vertical, but the social sector tend to be horizontal and peer to peer. My work is to build mechanisms that make them support each other.

Audrey Tang: The social sector.

Ima Sanchís: You’re talking about just a more horizontal type of way of doing politics?

Audrey Tang: I’m talking about building horizontal links between the vertical institution. I’m not talking about replacing those vertical structure with horizontal ones. I’m talking about building horizontal structures on top of the vertical ones.

Ima Sanchís: Between a horizontal structure and a vertical structure?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Ima Sanchís: Do you have any spiritual belief or religious belief?

Audrey Tang: I believe in the power of believing. I have the faith in having faith.

Ima Sanchís: At six years old, you read the classics in different languages. What idea moved you, overpowered you, or most influenced you?

Audrey Tang: A lot of my feeling is shaped around the writings of early Daoist.

Audrey Tang: I’ll use one example. It’s very simple language that a six year old understands.

Ima Sanchís: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: For example, there’s a verse that said 30 spoke meet in the harbor and that form a wheel, where the wheel is not as empty. It’s where it is useful and like hollowed out, the clay make a pot. It’s empty, but where the pot is not is where it’s useful. The use of what is is in the what isn’t.

Audrey Tang: For example, we cut the existing structures but we make windows and we make rooms out of these spaces. Where the room is not, there is room for us. The emptiness, the space is actually where the possibility is, and the structure is just there to support the empty space.

Ima Sanchís: [laughs] This is what, at six years old, you thought with your small mind?

Audrey Tang: Yes. It makes a lot of sense. The room is full of emptiness, and because of emptiness, it’s like a blank canvas and we can all paint on it. It’s very intuitive for a six years old.

Ima Sanchís: How was childhood for you? How did your childhood friends see you? What was this experience like?

Audrey Tang: I remember, because I have a heart defect that I did a surgery at 12.

Audrey Tang: Before 12, I cannot get upset, nor can I be too happy about anything, because when my heart beats too quickly, I faint.

Audrey Tang: That’s why a lot of my friends think when I was a young child, I seem more mature than my age because there’s a survival skill that tells me to start deep breathing whenever I feel too joyful or too angry.

Ima Sanchís: How did you feel?

Audrey Tang: First of all, I feel that I’m more at home, more equal, with people who share the same curiosity about knowledge, about society, or about each other. I never felt motivated by scores, by the extrinsic measures, by reward, or whatever, social status because, for me, while other people may feel very happy about it, I cannot feel very happy about it.

Audrey Tang: Nothing external can motivate me that much.

Ima Sanchís: When you talk about external values, what specifically are you talking about? Norms.

Audrey Tang: I’m talking about, for example, having a good grade, like having A++ or something.

Ima Sanchís: How did you feel? You felt?

Audrey Tang: I felt curious. I was having a lot of questions about how people behaved, the way they behave, about why society is structured the way the society is structured. I feel full of puzzles, full of questions, and full of curiosity. That’s my main feeling as a six year old.

Ima Sanchís: At eight years, you learned how to program by yourself.

Audrey Tang: While reading a book.

Ima Sanchís: Why did you choose this among all the other things that you had at your best, in your reach?

Audrey Tang: No, I learned many other things, too, when I was eight years old.

Audrey Tang: I think around the same time, I learned, for example, how to play a piano and how to make music on a notation.

Audrey Tang: To me, programming is just like making music. It’s just the notes are logic and the melody is human interaction.

Audrey Tang: The melody is human interaction.

Ima Sanchís: You were specifically interested in this type of language, programming language?

Audrey Tang: I wouldn’t say so because, to me, it’s just mathematics. It’s the same as the language that mathematicians use. It’s just that computers can automate the calculation, because I really don’t like doing the calculations by hand. [laughs] Having something that does the calculation for me is very useful.

Ima Sanchís: For you, it was a waste of time to calculate?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, because I can make all the calculation I want, but the computer can free my time to be more creative. When I’m calculating, I don’t feel creative at all.

Ima Sanchís: At 19 years old, you worked in Silicon Valley?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but for just about a year.

Ima Sanchís: How did you see it?

Ima Sanchís: What did it mean to you?

Audrey Tang: At that time, it’s right after the dot com crash. During the dot com boom, I also helped to run startups in Taiwan that get investment from Intel to build CoolBid, the first eBay-like auction sites in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: It was the first eBay like auction website in Taiwan, and it got a lot of investment from Intel and so on.

Audrey Tang: To me, I already had this three year of roller coaster of being a dot com entrepreneur. In Silicon Valley, that was when the open source movement is just beginning when I was in Silicon Valley. I started to learn about what we will now call social entrepreneurship.

Audrey Tang: That was when open source was beginning.

Audrey Tang: That’s how I learned this idea of open source, which is a way of combining the social rights, the social freedom movement, social justice movement, and entrepreneurship together, so using market power but also to further the social value. That’s when I start to learn about social entrepreneurship.

Ima Sanchís: How did you live your adolescence? What was most important to you?

Ima Sanchís: Did you have friends? Were you much more of a person who liked to be alone? What happened during that time?

Audrey Tang: I had two adolescence, a male one and a female. Which one are you referring to?

Ima Sanchís: Like Orlando.

Ima Sanchís: Which one was the first one?

Audrey Tang: The first one, when I was 14 or 15 years old, the male adolescence. I was just engulfed in the dot com boom. Running this startup with my friends, and many of them 10 years my senior. Most of them in the LGBTIQA+ community. That was mostly about chasing this ideal of the Internet sets everybody free.

Audrey Tang: We don’t need intermediary anymore, everybody can buy, auction, and sell anything, anywhere to anyone.

Audrey Tang: 10 years later in my other adolescence…

Audrey Tang: …at that time, it’s more about moving across the globe. When I was having my transgender journey, I traveled to more than 14 countries, more than 20 cities, and with this very international tribe of people in open source, trying to build a language together, a new programming language together.

Audrey Tang: I remember just a very transcultural view of my new identity very different from Sao Paulo to Vancouver to, I don’t know, Copenhagen, to Helsinki, and so on. It’s a very transcultural development for me, those two years.

Audrey Tang: Taiwan and Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, all across different continent, Tallinn.

Ima Sanchís: When you talk about your community, who are you talking about?

Audrey Tang: I’m talking about anyone who relinquish, who donate all or part of their copyright so that everybody can build upon their work. Together, it’s called an open innovation community. Within it, there’s open source, open hardware, open data, open government, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Open hardware, open source software, open access for academic papers, open content, open, I don’t know, and many other, open data, and so on.

Audrey Tang: The copyright.

Ima Sanchís: No, there’s no copyright.

Audrey Tang: So some of us, like me, we relinquish all of copyright.

Audrey Tang: Some of us, like Wikipedia, says that we only share the copyright to other people who also share their copyright. This is called copyleft.

Ima Sanchís: It was two years of travel?

Audrey Tang: Mm hmm.

Ima Sanchís: What essential thing did you discover?

Ima Sanchís: Beyond open code, what did you discover?

Audrey Tang: It’s hard to describe in English.

Audrey Tang: There is an African word called Ubuntu.

Audrey Tang: Ubuntu means roughly that we only become ourselves by making the entire community complete themselves through our contribution to the community. There’s no self actualization without community collaboration.

Ima Sanchís: This is what you discovered in these years of travel?

Audrey Tang: Yes. It means Ubuntu is transcultural, meaning that everywhere on Earth, I find the same emphasis on Ubuntu.

Angélica Guevara: All is one.

Audrey Tang: Hmm?

Angélica Guevara: All is one.

Audrey Tang: All is one. Yes, we are reincarnations of each other.

Audrey Tang: Reincarnations of each other.

Angélica Guevara: What is your reincarnation?

Audrey Tang: You. [laughs] That’s the idea.

Angélica Guevara: Where are you from? Not in this world, where are you from?

Audrey Tang: You mean like the idea…

Angélica Guevara: The galaxy.

Audrey Tang: The galaxy?

Angélica Guevara: Yeah. What is your dimension?

Audrey Tang: Back when I was visiting Addis Ababa, I was saying that we’re coming from the same ancestry as Lucy, who walked out of Africa. I think it’s important to realize that the idea of Ubuntu is not limited to human beings because Lucy, strictly speaking, is not Homo sapiens. She’s maybe Homo erectus or something, a species already quite distance from the modern Homo sapiens.

Audrey Tang: Just like that, we are the stewards for the next sapient life forms on the galaxy. Maybe we’re like Lucy, [laughs] in a sense, that we’re preparing us and preparing the galaxy really for new life forms and new sentiences in the future.

Ima Sanchís: What do you think we are going to be?

Audrey Tang: Whatever we want to be.

Audrey Tang: The idea of this whole Digital Future Society thing is that there’s a plurality of futures.

Audrey Tang: If we keep it plural, we don’t need to choose between the visions about singularity, which is always about reducing possibility, like a inevitable linear future.

Audrey Tang: Rather, we can focus our energy on making sure that the plurality that is already here gets conserved and indeed amplified with digital technology. That’s what I mean by bringing digital to the society rather than asking society to conform to the digital.

Ima Sanchís: I don’t understand… The technology comes to us, but don’t we create technology?

Audrey Tang: If we create technology and then immediately give away the monopoly of so-called intellectual property… then any culture can appropriate this technology in whichever way that feels appropriate to that community.

Ima Sanchís: If they don’t have intellectual property.

Audrey Tang: If the creators agree to give away, to share the…

Audrey Tang: If we design our technology for people, that means we decide for people.

Audrey Tang: If we design with people, that means that people take the technology to the appropriate use.

Ima Sanchís: This is what you’re trying to do in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: That’s just what people in Taiwan are trying to do, and mostly writing poetry. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I’m just writing poems.

Angélica Guevara: When we see. This the portrait?

Audrey Tang: This is my job description.

Ima Sanchís: When we see Internet of Things…

Audrey Tang: You can’t translate that.

Ima Sanchís: And the photo?

Audrey Tang: Yes. If you go to my Twitter, it’s pinned on my Twitter. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: You can, of course, take a photo.

Ima Sanchís: This is called the technological prayer?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. This is my prayer and also…

Angélica Guevara: This is your prayer?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, and also a job description. This is what digital minister means.

Ima Sanchís: This prayer started…

Ima Sanchís: This started with the Sunflower Revolution?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. The Sunflower Revolution is one very visible demonstration that puts everybody’s awareness of new possibilities. It’s a demo, a demonstration.

Audrey Tang: It’s a demo, like showing something possible.

Ima Sanchís: You were there?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I was there the night before they broke into the parliament. I was there to support the live streaming.

Ima Sanchís: What did you experience? What did happened? What happened to you in your inner being, in your heart?

Audrey Tang: I read about Occupy Wall Street, and I read Manuel Castells who did a lot of papers about occupy movement, so I know intellectually about how to run a occupy.

Audrey Tang: When the occupy actually happened, I discovered mostly what people really want is a garden that is thousands of miles away, but people still want to care about the sunflowers, the plants in the garden because they really want to make a difference.

Audrey Tang: Anything that can make them know for sure what is happening, like episteme, knowledge, of what is happening in the occupied parliament, as well as ways for them to share their support and distribute their support is welcomed by everybody.

Audrey Tang: It is less about the occupy, but rather about the gardening the entire society is doing for the occupied movement, the occupied parliament. It’s less about the occupiers. It’s more about this space. It’s like a garden that everybody can watch through live stream.

Ima Sanchís: I’m having trouble understanding.

Audrey Tang: All the research papers talk about the people who occupy.

Audrey Tang: It’s not about the people.

Audrey Tang: It’s about the space, the occupied parliament.

Audrey Tang: It’s like a garden with new seeds of new plants.

Audrey Tang: The entire society, half a million people on the street, many more online, want to help gardening this new possibility.

Audrey Tang: It’s our feeling that the more transparent we make the space for everyone, the more participatory it is the space for everyone, the more legitimate this entire movement become day by day.

Ima Sanchís: The last part, I’m sorry?

Audrey Tang: The more participatory and transparent it is, the more legitimate the movement is day by day.

Audrey Tang: After three weeks, all our demand were accepted by the head of parliament. It’s one of the rear occupy that is victorious.

Ima Sanchís: What you’re saying is that this is not about social movements, about more transparency, this is about a garden? Or, is this garden a metaphor or a symbol?

Audrey Tang: It’s both a reality in a sense that it is really a physical space that people really want to know every minute what is happening in it.

Audrey Tang: It is, of course, also a metaphor because every mayor candidate at the end of 2014, if they don’t support open government, they lose mayoral election. If they do, they win sometimes surprisingly.

Ima Sanchís: When you’re talking about the garden?

Audrey Tang: No, I’m talking about gardening, like taking care of a space collectively.

Audrey Tang: You can call it a stewardship or something. It doesn’t change.

Audrey Tang: I guess if you want to get academic, I can talk about collective stewardship, care, and responsibility, but the gardening is easier to understand.

Audrey Tang: Stewardship and care.

Ima Sanchís: Stewardship?

Angélica Guevara: Many variance.

Audrey Tang: The point is that everybody feel that they can make a difference. They feel that their efforts add to each other, rather than fight against each other when taking care of a space collectively. You see that online in Wikipedia. In occupy the parliament, this is the first time I feel a physical space have the same property as Wikipedia.

Ima Sanchís: What you’re talking about is live streaming, what’s happening in Parliament?

Audrey Tang: Mm hmm.

Ima Sanchís: The physical space is Parliament.

Audrey Tang: It’s occupied.

Ima Sanchís: It’s occupied by…

Audrey Tang: By the people.

Ima Sanchís: By the people. What does occupied mean in this case?

Audrey Tang: It means that anyone who want to talk about the Cross Strait Service and Trade Agreement with Beijing, which is something the MP at the time refused to deliberate. The MPs who are elected are on strike. The people have to do their job ourselves. That’s the theory anyway.

Audrey Tang: It was an agreement.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Anyone can get to the Parliament and share their view. There’s 20 different NGO running 20 different corners, each one talking about one aspect of the Cross Strait Service and Trade Agreement.

Audrey Tang: That’s the gardening, yeah.

Ima Sanchís: It’s very important for you…

Ima Sanchís: One of your priorities is sustainability.

Audrey Tang: The sustainable goals, of course, is the language with which we express our work.

Ima Sanchís: How do these two worlds converge, the digital and the natural, for you?

Ima Sanchís: These plants, these animals, these creatures, how do…?

Ima Sanchís: Yeah. How do these concrete things meet with the digital?

Audrey Tang: For me, for example, the highlight, the focus of the year for Taiwan…

Audrey Tang: …is on climate action…

Audrey Tang: …and life underwater.

Audrey Tang: 13 and 14 of the 17.

Audrey Tang: The digital…

Audrey Tang: …is about making the climate and life below water, which usually do not have a voice or a vote in a democracy…

Audrey Tang: …to give them…

Audrey Tang: …a equal voice…

Audrey Tang: …so that the society can recognize, for example, the highest mountain in Taiwan, almost 4,000 meters high, is called Sylvia by the indigenous people.

Audrey Tang: …Sylvia by the indigenous people.

Audrey Tang: They believe that it is a living spirit. It talks to them. It guides their vision of the community, and they can have real conversation with the mountain.

Audrey Tang: We lost that when we shifted to representational democracy.

Audrey Tang: Because, certainly, the mountain doesn’t vote.

Audrey Tang: Through digital, we can use reliable data and a cross sectoral partnership to establish things like a natural personhood to give the mountains, rivers, and so on, seats at a table using digital avatars.

Audrey Tang: Very concretely, like in New Zealand…

Audrey Tang: Yeah. In New Zealand, the Whanganui River is a legal person.

Audrey Tang: The river can sit on a board of a company.

Angélica Guevara: A spirit, it’s a spirit.

Audrey Tang: The river can sue for damage.

Audrey Tang: They do so by its speakers enabled by the digital data that is accountable, and everybody see what really is the health of the river and so on, so that the speakers can speak with the spirit of the river.

Ima Sanchís: What else?

Ima Sanchís: What is for your essential?

Audrey Tang: As a digital minister, for me what is essential…

Audrey Tang: …is that I stay a lower case minister.

Audrey Tang: Meaning that I preach about digital…

Audrey Tang: …like a minister of a church…

Audrey Tang: …and instead of dictating anything.

Audrey Tang: That’s essential to me.

Angélica Guevara: You want to share.

Audrey Tang: I want to show possibilities without taking them away from people in the name of progress.

Audrey Tang: I want to conserve all the different cultures so that they show different futures, different possibilities. I don’t want to take away their different possibilities in the name of progress for a particular culture.

Ima Sanchís: What can we do with this whole dark side of the Internet, the lies, how they can replace government with lies, Trump with elections? Fake news.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we say disinformation.

Audrey Tang: Which means intentional and truth that harm the public.

Audrey Tang: That harm the public. Not a minister’s image.

Audrey Tang: That harm the public, because it’s not about the government minister’s image. If you harm a government minister’s image, you are just doing good journalism.

Audrey Tang: Harming the public health and harming democracy, that is another matter.

Ima Sanchís: Sorry?

Audrey Tang: That’s another matter. It’s…

Audrey Tang: You’re right. What we have found is that if we make humor a fun response…

Audrey Tang: …like there was a rumor that says…

Ima Sanchís: Humor or rumor?

Audrey Tang: We counter rumor with humor.

Audrey Tang: There was a rumor that says, “Perming your hair many times a week will be subject to a $1 million fine.”

Audrey Tang: Within an hour, our prime minister spread this image.

Audrey Tang: This image says, “This rumor is not true.”

Audrey Tang: A young photo of the prime minister says, “I may be bald now, but I will not punish people with hair.”

Audrey Tang: In a small fine print that says, “What we’ve done is introducing a label requirement for hair products starting 2021.”

Audrey Tang: The prime minister now says, “If you keep perming your hair many times a week, it will not damage your pocket, but it will damage your hair.”

Audrey Tang: It’s serious. In serious cases, you can look like me. You can look at me to see what will happen to your hair.

Audrey Tang: This is very funny. Actually, most people see this before they see the rumor.

Audrey Tang: They become vaccinated.

Ima Sanchís: It’s funny.

Ima Sanchís: They do this with all the rumors?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Every ministry have a team of comedians.

Audrey Tang: Whenever we see a trending rumor…

Audrey Tang: …we just make it even more trending humor.

Ima Sanchís: Is this your idea?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I call this mimetic engineering.

Audrey Tang: Memetic engineering, like genetic engineering. [laughs] I proposed this early 2017 to the cabinet meeting.

Audrey Tang: The real work is done by the comedians. I’m not a comedian. [laughs]

Ima Sanchís: Your idea was yours?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Sure.

Ima Sanchís: A great idea.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Ima Sanchís: How do you combat the…

Audrey Tang: Interference.

Ima Sanchís: …interference, the Chinese interference?

Audrey Tang: For example, we have rumor that says, “Hong Kong people, young people, are paying 20 million to murder a police.”

Ima Sanchís: The police from where?

Audrey Tang: From Hong Kong.

Ima Sanchís: From Hong Kong.

Audrey Tang: At November last year, they were trying to spread this rumor to interfere with the Hong Kong local election and then the Taiwan presidential election.

Ima Sanchís: I’m confused.

Audrey Tang: At that time, the people in Hong Kong were protesting in the street. There was a rumor that says that they are paying young people large amount of money to kill police and, in a way, to discredit the protesters for people in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: The rumor actually have a photo next to a caption that says, “This 13 years old thug bought iPhones by recruiting people to do violence or something.” Taiwan FactCheck Center actually found out the photo was from Reuters, but the Reuters said nothing about paying people.

Audrey Tang: The photo is from Reuters. It’s a real photo.

Audrey Tang: The caption is disinformation.

Audrey Tang: We attributed this to the central political and legal unit of the Chinese Communist Party. This actually originates from the PRC state propaganda unit.

Audrey Tang: What we did, instead of taking this down, we make sure that every time you see this disinformation on Facebook or on other places, you see a public notice telling you that this is state propaganda from China.

Audrey Tang: The PRC propaganda is not taken down because that will create more social tension…

Audrey Tang: …and infringe on media freedom.

Audrey Tang: Facebook and other large Internet platforms agreed to put a public notice so people know where the source of that disinformation is.

Ima Sanchís: How do you combat the Chinese interference within Taiwan? Is this within Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: This is mostly within Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: They are trying to make Taiwan people not sympathize with people in Hong Kong.

Ima Sanchís: What did you say again? I’m sorry.

Ima Sanchís: The Taiwanese received this propaganda?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Ima Sanchís: What’s the objective of this propaganda for Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: It’s to make Taiwanese people see Hong Kong protesters not as people who are for democracy.

Audrey Tang: Because the end game of the PRC interference of the propaganda is to make people in the democratic society lose confidence in democracy itself.

Audrey Tang: If people look at democracy activists and they think only about violence, then their propaganda works.

Ima Sanchís: What’s happening here in the photo? She doesn’t understand what’s happening.

Audrey Tang: It was a Reuters photography that says, “A teenage anti extradition bill protester is seen during a march to demand democracy and political reform in Hong Kong.” It’s the original caption by the Reuters.

Audrey Tang: Sport shoes.

Ima Sanchís: With what objective? He bought iPhones and…

Audrey Tang: This was the propaganda that tried to paint the teenagers not as people advocating democracy, but rather people who are paid to do violence, like a thug.

Ima Sanchís: Sorry. They pay the…

Ima Sanchís: What is your dream?

Audrey Tang: Like last night?

Angélica Guevara: What is the last night dreams?

Ima Sanchís: What’s your dream beyond last night?

Angélica Guevara: Your goal.

Audrey Tang: Like tomorrow? [laughs] I dream of a transcultural republic of citizens.

Audrey Tang: Because in Taiwan…

Ima Sanchís: What does transcultural mean?

Audrey Tang: It means being able to start from one culture and then grow into another culture, and being able to tell your own life story but from the perspective of another culture, and you can keep doing this. It’s like a freedom to move between country, except it’s between cultures.

Ima Sanchís: What do you mean by cultures? Are you talking about the world or are you talking about…?

Audrey Tang: No, it’s just within Taiwan because we have more than 20 national languages.

Audrey Tang: Like in Switzerland, for example, people speak different languages. They support different football teams. They maybe sing different songs. When there comes a referendum, everybody agree with the process, and through the process, see whatever they’re working with from the lens from the other culture in Switzerland.

Ima Sanchís: Are you talking about empathy or…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but not just empathy, because empathy, I’m still in my culture when I empathize with another culture. Transcultural means I take the perspective of the other culture.

Angélica Guevara: Agree in the different countries.

Ima Sanchís: Your personal dream?

Audrey Tang: My personal dream is to remain a channel and the space that enable this kind of transcultural conversations to happen. The space within is like, I don’t know, sunlight…

Audrey Tang: …that enables this kind of conversation across cultures.

Angélica Guevara: Little sun.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the flower, sunflower. [laughs]

Angélica Guevara: This is the cosmos.

Ima Sanchís: The prime minister, did this person, think of you, or how did she notice you?

Ima Sanchís: The prime minister…

Audrey Tang: Appoint?

Ima Sanchís: No.

Angélica Guevara: See you.

Ima Sanchís: No.

Audrey Tang: What?

Ima Sanchís: Targeted you.

Audrey Tang: I didn’t understand, because we are nominated by the prime minister, but approved by the president. The people elect the president directly. I report mostly to the prime minister, but ultimately to the president. I’ve worked with many prime ministers now, but the same president, Dr. Tsai Ing wen.

Ima Sanchís: Why did the prime minister choose you?

Audrey Tang: Back in 2016?

Audrey Tang: It’s because, at that time, they were trying to find someone that can connect the startup community…

Audrey Tang: …and a policy making community. They need a cultural translator.

Audrey Tang: They asked me to recruit such a person, but I cannot convince my friend to join. I give me the job.

Audrey Tang: I’m doing this for fun.

Ima Sanchís: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Ima Sanchís: Thank you.