Philip Epps: Are we on record like the camera, or...?

Audrey Tang: No, no. I’ll just turn on the audio on.

Philip Epps: Audio.

Audrey Tang: You’ll get a transcript to edit.

Philip Epps: Oh cool. Thank you. Very nice. It’s my first time in this building. It’s pretty interesting.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Philip Epps: I had to show you a photograph because I didn’t know your Chinese names. I showed you what could be your photograph. Oh yeah, you didn’t tell me that.

Audrey Tang: I’m sorry.

Philip Epps: You saw my email. I’m a producer. I’m also a wannabe technie, but not a programmer. I’ve done some PR and marketing for two companies in China and Hong Kong here. I’m not the millennial age that you normally see. Obviously, I’m 59. But I have a lot of ideas and I’ve been around a bit. I read a lot. I assimilate stuff.

Philip Epps: When I saw that you had gotten your position I thought...I hadn’t heard of you before but I was like, "Oh, yeah. That’s the symbol of the new Taiwan or the global ethic that’s going on." Smart. Hacker. Transgender. Minister without portfolio.

Philip Epps: I thought, "What a great story." That was my first take on that. Then I thought, "Well, I should present some of my ideas." So here we are, to make a long story short. How is your effort to make Taiwan transparent?

Audrey Tang: It is Silicon Valley. That first thing is...

Philip Epps: What is your priority?

Audrey Tang: ...is saying that we are not making Taiwan an Asia Silicon Valley. One of my first moves was to redefine the Asian Silicon Valley plan into the Asia dot Silicon Valley plan, meaning that we’re connecting to the rest of Asia, and then we’re connecting to Silicon Valley, but we are not aiming to be the Silicon Valley of Asia.

Philip Epps: There were some...there was a message aspect...

Audrey Tang: There was a lot of messages, especially during the campaign.

Philip Epps: I know, but especially Silicon Island.

Audrey Tang: Exactly right, which I think is all very silly.

Philip Epps: I’d love to hear your take on it’s the connections rather than...

Audrey Tang: We have the ASVDA, which is our website. As you can see, it is Asia Silicon Valley. It’s not "Asian" Silicon Valley, meaning that we’re linking with Asia...

Philip Epps: Or "Asia’s," right?

Audrey Tang: Exactly, so it’s linking with Asia and linking with Silicon Valley.

Philip Epps: The links already exist, so what’s the challenge for you?

Audrey Tang: Two main challenges for the ASVDA. The first challenge is that there is a lot of IoT innovation going on in Taiwan for R&D and everything, but it’s mostly centered around lower levels such as the sensors, such as the protocol level, the computational level, and...

Philip Epps: Small devices and hardware.

Audrey Tang: Exactly, but then for the business intelligences, for the analytics, for the application layer things, there is very little integration between the Taiwanese people making this kind of software versus the Taiwanese people doing the sensors and everything.

Audrey Tang: It’s normally a very disjointed ecosystem. We have the suppliers who supply to brands overseas, and we have some app people working on analytics...

Philip Epps: But there’s no real glue...

Philip Epps: ...all together.

Audrey Tang: There’s no real glue. There’s no glue to, and so that’s the first challenge.

Philip Epps: Are you the glue?

Audrey Tang: Not exactly. I’m mostly just pointing out directions. ASVDA is actually an independent agency, and we hire people who are seasoned veteran Silicon Valley people to be the C‑level people, because these...

Philip Epps: How is it going, the recruiting?

Audrey Tang: It’s all done. Yeah, linking Asia, connecting to Valley...

Philip Epps: Aside from the visuals, what does it really mean on the ground?

Audrey Tang: On the ground, it means there’s a technology officer to do the research environment thing. There’s the human resource, for lack of better term, officer, that does the IoT gluing, as we just said.

Audrey Tang: There’s a CFO that makes the investments, both on a national level, to the more promising sectors, and also linking Silicon Valley VCs for Taiwanese companies. It’s bi‑directional. There’s also the deregulation and policies to identify exactly what the regulations need to change in response to such startups and IoT people.

Audrey Tang: Finally, there’s also a media marketing part, because as you can see, this is actually a very marketing Taiwan kind of move.

Philip Epps: Right, because it’s an export economy...

Audrey Tang: It is, so...

Philip Epps: You’ve got to put a good face to the products, or...

Audrey Tang: Exactly. We hired these people already. I’m head of supervising committee. I just set an overall direction. It’s not mostly me, actually. Mostly it’s the minister of NDC, who is himself a minister without portfolio also, and then working with the economy and scientific knowledge administers.

Audrey Tang: The CEO is his deputy minister, the deputy minister of NDC commission, who runs the day‑to‑day program. This is the structure. I mostly just set our direction.

Philip Epps: What is NDC?

Audrey Tang: The National Development Council.

Philip Epps: Are you a bureaucrat now? Is that sort of how you see yourself, just sort of shepherding the ideas, or are you more of an activist? I saw you, my first hit was you’re an activist.

Audrey Tang: I don’t see how this should be naturally exclusive.

Philip Epps: There’s not a difference. No.

Audrey Tang: Mostly I see myself as a channel that takes the activist circles, ideas, collective intelligence, and whatever, and try to synthesize it and translate it somehow into bureaucratic language, and then also trying to reform the bureaucracy.

Audrey Tang: So that people there also learn to internally collaborate and have this kind of organizational structure instead of the purely tree‑like structure. As you can see, this is very cross‑functional.

Philip Epps: Right. I’m very interested in this part, the media and marketing, because you have to get the word out. I’m asking silly questions, but is that the public face to any kind of change or adaptation to of hardware to software, or global tech more?

Audrey Tang: It’s mostly that the two core elements. One, it’s not about moving from hardware to software. We have pretty strong hardware, pretty strong software. It’s just that they were not linked together. They were not glued together as a set.

Audrey Tang: The core message is about to create a comprehensive ecosystem and diversified aspects for services. It’s not about focusing more on software. It’s about getting software people to work with hardware people.

Audrey Tang: The next part is a startup entrepreneurship ecosystem, which we need to increase our supply chain and related laws and regulations, and building an innovative environment. Then again, this is not about young people.

Audrey Tang: This is about bridging the young people’s talents and entrepreneurship with the more seasoned industry veteran’s resources, and so on. This is intergenerational glue, but the force here at play is always on the gluing. It’s not on promoting any particular sector.

Philip Epps: How’s this site going? The first part of your briefing was this part, right? Now we’re...

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Philip Epps: Is this more challenging, or...?

Audrey Tang: I think so far, so good. We have an innovation and entrepreneurship plan going on, also managed by the NDC. I’m overseeing only one small part of it. It’s about social enterprises. That’s about companies whose solve social problems while doing their business.

Audrey Tang: Or you can see it as a social mission that happens to earn some money to be sustainable, or you can view it any which way. That’s my purview, but there’s other part as well. There’s the green energy, sustainable development part.

Audrey Tang: Which is one part of the entrepreneurship also, because of our changed electricity laws that promotes renewable resources. That will be Minister Wu’s work. It is not my work. There’s also many other plans around startup entrepreneurship, but I’m mostly about social enterprises.

Philip Epps: Attracting young talent, Silicon Valley or globally?

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Philip Epps: That’s kind of what the end result is, the end product? You need that...

Audrey Tang: Right, and then the end product, like this week, we’re having this foreign talent act, which encourages people from all sort of diverse backgrounds.

Philip Epps: Not just coders, but...

Audrey Tang: Not just coders.

Philip Epps: ...people and...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, there’s an act for recruitment and employment form. Right, so you did.

Philip Epps: That’s a streamlining that’s allowing people easy access to visas and things like that?

Audrey Tang: That’s right, and also having their spouses and children to easily enjoy health care here and so on. It’s about improving the overall life quality of foreign people and talent.

Philip Epps: Because you know the digital nomad isn’t really looking for long‑term visas. They’re not really...It’s hard. I’ve looked at the entrepreneur visa for myself. I’m on a 90‑day entry visa, a landing visa.

Philip Epps: It looks great until you get to the line that says, "You need two million NC to show the bank," and that stops...

Audrey Tang: Right, that’s a big problem, but this is something else. This, you just need a local company to vouch for you or whatever.

Philip Epps: Sponsor?

Audrey Tang: Sponsor...

Philip Epps: It’s the same thing as getting an ARC.

Audrey Tang: Not exactly, but, yeah. I know there’s still some threshold going here, which is what we get from this public consultation. We’ve got a lot of foreign people saying that keeping to the APRC is too strict, or a minimum of 183 days per year in Taiwan is not encouraging, and so on. We...

Philip Epps: That’s livable, but I think it’s the money you have to put up front, even if it’s just showing it at the bank for a couple of days. I think the young people are put off by that, a little bit.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. The Ministry of Labor, actually, adjusted this a lot in response to the public’s...

Philip Epps: I know there’s a lot of change happening.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, lots of change happening. You can see, there’s a lot of, huge amount of feedback that we got here. The adjusted version will probably get to the executive meeting maybe this Thursday or next Thursday, and then we will have this public announcement.

Audrey Tang: Of course, the legislation still has to pass it, but at least it will be for a wider circulation. So, yeah, that’s what...

Philip Epps: When is it going to be easier for someone? Basically, I’ve been doing a bit of research, and there’s a lot of this, global movement in young people. Not necessarily coders, but people who are doing online stuff, and they’re kind of flopping around.

Philip Epps: They’re looking for travel and nice places to go, and friendly people. Taiwan offers that, obviously. I think they enjoy Asia, a lot of Americans, but also Europeans and such. It seems like there are some hot spots now. Bali is one.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Philip Epps: Chiang Mai is another.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Philip Epps: Thailand is attractive, because you get ‑‑ at least Americans ‑‑ you get a six‑month landing visa with no problem. They’re looking for what? Fast Internet, decent accommodation. They’re kind of making money on their own online.

Philip Epps: That’s an issue. It’s like what if you’ve got online businesses ‑‑ several ‑‑ which I kind of do, and yet, you’re not really officially paying taxes if you’re on a visitor visa. You don’t want to do anything illegal. You like where you are. It’s obviously pretty alternative compared to the structure that this is set up.

Audrey Tang: If you’re online company is targeting Taiwan or the vicinity as a primary user base...

Philip Epps: Targeting the world. That’s what...

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Philip Epps: There’s a billion people online...

Audrey Tang: Of course, so...

Philip Epps: ...e‑commerce...

Audrey Tang: All we ask is to just pay this five percent tax, the VAT tax, which starts this May, I think.

Philip Epps: That’s for purchasing, though. It’s not...

Audrey Tang: That does for purchasing.

Philip Epps: What if you’re actually making income?

Audrey Tang: You’re making an income...

Philip Epps: Yeah. It’s illegal.

Audrey Tang: Wait a second. You’re saying that you have a US business.

Philip Epps: I’m saying there’s a whole population of young people out there, digital nomads, and this is a growing phenomena, which I know you are aware of that. They’re super smart, hungry, educated, and they’re doing all kinds of stuff, whether it’s online editing, online education, this, this, this, Web development, software, whatever.

Philip Epps: They’ve got clients everywhere, and they’re always hustling for new clients. This is the new economic order, part of it anyway. It’s not the future of all of us, doing...

Audrey Tang: No, it’s...

Philip Epps: ...but it’s significant, and if you want to bring young talent here...

Audrey Tang: If their bank is not in Taiwan, their customers are not in Taiwan, it just so happens they work from Taiwan, I don’t think our tax agency has anything to say...

Philip Epps: I don’t know. You’re working in a place you don’t have official work status.

Audrey Tang: That’s right, so it’s just a visitor. Basically, you’re on a vacation. That’s the working...

Philip Epps: But you’re still working.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Philip Epps: I don’t know. I’m...OK.

Audrey Tang: It’s a working vacation, but...

Philip Epps: It’ll be interesting to see what they...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but if you start working for a Taiwan company, then the line, you know...

Philip Epps: What if you wanted to be established here? What if you wanted to stay longer‑term, or at least have some flexibility with that, and want health care and things like that? What if you wanted to pay into taxes? What if you wanted to be part of that system? It’s not that easy. You have to have that Taiwan...

Audrey Tang: No, it’s not. It’s not. You need to, exactly, but this is part of it, because if you qualify for a special professional, your so‑called go cart, then actually, it makes it much easier. We’re mostly talking about, it’s not quite O‑3 or O‑1 visa, like in US, which requires a much higher...

Philip Epps: I’m not sure what that is, like H‑1B or something?

Audrey Tang: No, no. A O‑1 or O‑3 is not quite Nobel prize level, but if there’s someone that’s very...

Philip Epps: Oh, I see.

Audrey Tang: ...respected.

Philip Epps: ...patents, or papers.

Audrey Tang: Right, exactly. The special professional, our draft definition is that you’re in the top quarter of salaries, so professional, currently, in Taiwan, that is to say average of about this number NDD per month. If your previous job, not necessarily in Taiwan, pay you this much, then we actually want you here.

Philip Epps: Sure. That’s pretty standard. Most countries attract...Anybody who’s got that certain level...

Philip Epps: ...Nobel prize.

Audrey Tang: Exactly. But it’s not just the payment. You can also get...And this is what I mean by vouching. The Academia Sinica or the ITRI doesn’t have to hire you. They just have to write a recommendation letter that says you are this kind of professional, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Finally, if you work one part of the focal industry ‑‑ high tech, e‑commerce, green energy, technology management ‑‑ then it’s up to these ministries to recognize your contribution to that area, and then you also automatically qualify, even not meeting the salary definition.

Audrey Tang: I think if you’re talking about digital nomads, then it’s mostly about the digital economy, which will be the purview of the Ministry of Economy Affairs to make such a recognition. If you fit the definition, then you automatically qualify for the special professional, not necessarily a professional worker. This is one part that will probably make your life easier.

Philip Epps: I’m actually thinking about this global community, because you want to attract global talent, right?

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Philip Epps: I think there’s separation. The digital nomad is not the Silicon Valley professional, right?

Audrey Tang: Right.

Philip Epps: They’re not software engineers, necessarily.

Audrey Tang: But they work in the, broadly speaking, digital economy, which means their work transmits over online channels, basically. They produce digital goods.

Philip Epps: Yes, right.

Audrey Tang: That’s...

Philip Epps: They’re welcome here.

Audrey Tang: ...commission...Right, so they will get, if this act gets passed, a three‑year stay, and with more or less the same benefits as a permanent...

Philip Epps: You get health care, and you get...

Audrey Tang: Exactly. That’s the basic idea.

Philip Epps: It sounds good.

Audrey Tang: I think it’s a pretty good compromise.

Philip Epps: How will they know about this, though? They’re working in Chiang Mai, and they’re sort of bopping around. Obviously, they’re well‑read, and they’re online, and they’ve done a lot of stuff, but, "Oh, let’s go to Taiwan."

Philip Epps: "What’s the laws like?" "Oh, you can get your landing visa, the 90‑day landing visa." They may not ask the next question. "Well, what if I..." I guess that would..."

Philip Epps: "...and I could be here for a while."

Audrey Tang: One of the reason for circulating this online consultation is just to raise awareness of the expat communities and so on so that people know this is coming. We did see this circulating on Facebook and Twitter, and other parts, so it’s not as if there were a warrant, all right?

Audrey Tang: The other thing is that once is sent to legislation, we imagine the ruling party, the DPP ‑‑ because that’s one of the DPP’s main presidential promises during the campaign. Their PR machine...

Philip Epps: Kind of streamlined...

Audrey Tang: Right. Their PR machine will make it very visible.

Philip Epps: I see. As a producer, to me, you put together a visual, a media campaign or such, whether it’s a documentary or a commercial, things like that. I’m not sure if it’s just that bump up to the level of actually raising money for it and things like that, because the higher the quality, the higher the costs.

Philip Epps: I’ve estimated with my director one to three million for a 10‑minute documentary about this very subject.

Philip Epps: We think it could be very colorful, including surfing in Wi‑Ho, or all the other benefits of a cool place to stop.

Audrey Tang: That sounds good.

Philip Epps: It’s in the works, so how would I apply for...I don’t think the government’s just going to hand over money of that kind to a project like that.

Audrey Tang: If it’s DPP’s PR team, then it’s actually not the administration’s business. It would be the party or the president’s office, perhaps.

Philip Epps: This is the idea, "Taiwan Trending." Fast‑moving, music, skateboarding.

Audrey Tang: This sounds good.

Audrey Tang: What we’re saying is that we’re produced as policies, of laws, and so on. Most of the promotional work goes to the legislators, their parties, and sometimes the presidential office handles promotion.

Philip Epps: Why is it sort of broken out like that?

Audrey Tang: Because it’s their job to pass this act. Technically, we just produce a draft for the legislators to deliberate and to pass. Once they pass it, the credit goes to the legislator who countersigns or...

Philip Epps: It was your idea, but they get the credit for it. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Sure. That’s our working relationship. In the US, administration can’t propose acts like this, but it has to be...

Philip Epps: No, they propose all the time, but they don’t...

Audrey Tang: They have to hand it to one of the assembly people, right?

Philip Epps: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Of course, all the credit goes to the assembly people?

Philip Epps: I guess...

Audrey Tang: It’s the same system here, right?

Philip Epps: Yeah, but if they’re president of the United States, it doesn’t really matter, right? They don’t need to extra credit.

Audrey Tang: In any case.

Philip Epps: Yeah. I would like to let you take a look at that. There’s other information I’d like to talk about. One is...You saw this, right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure.

Philip Epps: This is so cool, that they’re opting out of Hong Kong, and the fact that a lot of Hong Kong people are immigrating here to get away from the oppression of the Mainland. I’m not anti‑China, but I think Taiwan is a special place for its tolerance and freedoms.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I was just profiled on "Time," that talks about rumors and whatever, but they also put a lot of...Yeah, this is a coverage...

Philip Epps: Was this a new article?

Audrey Tang: It is pretty new, April 7th. The Time person interviewed me, and then talk about things, and it has a lot of information related to the thing that we talk about. The other thing is that it also highlighted on Reporters Without Borders, because the freedom of speech is kind of the core value...

Philip Epps: They’re under attack in Hong Kong, where there was supposed to be 50 years of freedom. It’s not. They’re lying.

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Philip Epps: This is the imagery of this sort of startup. This is all familiar stuff to you. I just wanted to say Berlin, London. This is London and Silicon Valley. There’s so much activity out there, these hubs, and I don’t really see it happening here. I know...

Audrey Tang: We don’t have the highlights...

Philip Epps: ...startup stadium, but they’re sort of individual and separated.

Audrey Tang: That’s exactly right. Previously, we had a startup center in the Taiwan Air Force. Have you been there?

Philip Epps: I’ve only seen the sign.

Audrey Tang: It’s now being made into a more...

Philip Epps: TAF, right?

Audrey Tang: Right, the TAF. There’s plenty of very good visuals around the TAF.

Philip Epps: What’s happening to it now?

Audrey Tang: It’s turning into a more culturally‑oriented kind of cultural park of sorts. We’re still looking for a highlights place just like this. We have several candidates. We don’t have a finalized destination yet.

Philip Epps: TAF is becoming more like a museum?

Audrey Tang: Not exactly. The Ministry of Culture is designing so that it is still hip, and innovative in Taiwan, but it’s about the...

Philip Epps: Showcasing, right?

Audrey Tang: Exactly, showcasing Taiwanese films, Taiwanese products, and so on.

Philip Epps: But not purely the innovation sector?

Audrey Tang: It’s still innovation, but it’s mostly around so‑called cultural startups or cultural innovation.

Philip Epps: This is sort of the second half of my presentation, which is something you may or may not have heard about. It’s called Building 21. It was a pretty ramshackle office space that entrepreneurs could go in and move walls and do all kinds of experimentation in the ’50s. It’s been torn down now, but it’s on the MIT campus.

Philip Epps: I had this idea of why don’t you or we start something like that, Building 21, and sort of emulate what they did at MIT. The whole idea is...I’ve seen that the ITrI has something in Hsinchu. There’s a very expensive big building, all this great architecture. I’m not sure what the name of that is...

Philip Epps: ...but it’s gorgeous. It’s stunning. This is where people could go in and engage and even camp. It’s much more on the kind of grass‑roots level. Getting into the ITRI building, it just seems like there would be a wall of paperwork and red tape.

Philip Epps: I think that that’s what is sort of like Steve Jobs’ garage, but before that. I like the story here. There was a lot of science and a lot of brains, and I know that there’s abandoned buildings in Taiwan that are just kind of sitting there.

Philip Epps: I think the connection to the hub that I believe that Taiwan needs for that software, that digital nomads that land to hear about, word of mouth, to say, "Oh, I think Taiwan is the place to go. It’s cool. There’s people there."

Philip Epps: "There’s a lot of things to see and do. The food is great, and the government allows me to work on my stuff without any kind of threat of deportation and things like that." It doesn’t have to be in Taipei. It can be in Yilan, where I live, or outside, less expensive.

Audrey Tang: This is the thing you were talking about? That’s the Hsinchu site.

Philip Epps: Right.

Philip Epps: It’s incredible. It’s a billion US dollars, right, to build that.

Audrey Tang: Right, and there is a corresponding center at Sunnyvale, so yeah. I’m aware of this plan, and they have pretty good Web copies for the communications they’re putting through and so on. This is mostly, I think, a minister of science technology’s work, even though the site is ITRI.

Audrey Tang: What your proposing is a much smaller thing?

Philip Epps: It’s, I guess, the idea would be it’s a live‑work space. The graffiti is welcome. It’s alternative San Francisco kind of bohemia ethic. That’s going to scare people away, because, "Oh no way. I don’t have my PhD or my...I’m not capable to do that." But something like this, if there was some PR, word of mouth...

Audrey Tang: A little bit like Freemont before it got gentrified? There was this town, where...

Philip Epps: You worked in Silicon Valley, right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Philip Epps: I know Freemont. It’s kind of near San Francisco.

Audrey Tang: Right. It was like that, graffiti were coming and so on, and there would be people that set up home there, and then they all left it and so on, but then...

Philip Epps: Kind of a squat, right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but like a gentrified, like really quickly.

Philip Epps: That’s Freemont, though, with the houses prices and...

Audrey Tang: No, but the thing is that we see this happening in Taiwan all the time. If you don’t have a status of a heritage site, that prevents housing speculation. Any bustling center of graffiti very quickly get gentrified with skyrocketing housing prices and so on. This is...

Philip Epps: Outside of Taipei?

Audrey Tang: Even outside of Taipei. You see that around the major cities. Of course, on a county, I think this is much better, because they don’t speculate as much in those corners.

Audrey Tang: On the other hand, the transportation and the link to the PR tems that each of the mayors has is considerably smaller. They are still working very hard on that. I’m aware of that.

Philip Epps: Where would there be an attractive place...? There’s some mayors wanting that. They want to bring it in, but they’re against it. They want...

Audrey Tang: Yeah. All the mayors want it, but they were informed by many different forces. There’s forces from, for example...

Philip Epps: Mostly entrepreneurial, where they were trying to make money for themselves.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but the entrepreneur sometimes become successful business people, and then they want something else. Adobe was like that. It’s hard to balance this. At administration here, what we’re trying to do is to empower all the local cities, and townships, and counties to decide for themselves what kind of culture, what kind of this kind of promotion they want.

Audrey Tang: It used to be that Taiwan allocates all the budgets from the administration to the local cities. The local cities don’t really have their own tax sources to build sustainable projects, so...

Philip Epps: You need to offer incentives to...

Audrey Tang: Exactly. They are not aligned. They’re mostly aligned just to please the administration’s planners, and the KMD, of course, loved this, for obvious reasons.

Audrey Tang: We are working on a new law that will change the administration, local level political responsibility, the financial reform act. It’s very controversial.

Philip Epps: Because you’re taking, sort of, national party power away?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, exactly.

Philip Epps: Decentralizing...

Audrey Tang: Decentralizing everything and making it much more powerful to be a mayor, for accounting, which explains why it’s kind of unpopular for the past 10 years.

Audrey Tang: Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense. Anyway, it’s...

Philip Epps: Thank you. That’s a big picture approach to that, but maybe there’s a mayor out there who sees the light, and that wouldn’t be so expecting a windfall, wouldn’t be so greedy to put it in and to be very frank. They would see the advantage of having digital nomads coming in...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but then they won’t need us then.

Philip Epps: They what?

Audrey Tang: They won’t need us then.

Philip Epps: I need you. I need somebody to say, or even private sector counterparts, who could say, "Yeah, we think Yi-Lan." Yi-Lan Science Park, what’s going on with that? Not to change the subject, but I live next door to it, and it’s vacant. It’s gorgeous.

Philip Epps: It’s supposed to be software, but...

Audrey Tang: That’s the artifact of the previous generation financial division law.

Philip Epps: Meaning science park kind of thing?

Audrey Tang: Meaning that, because the administration at the national level wants science parks, all the different candidates...

Philip Epps: Hsinchu was so successful...

Audrey Tang: Exactly. All the counties and all the cities proposed science parks, so we get an overflowing number of science parks, and of course, some of them are vacant.

Philip Epps: Some of them failed.

Audrey Tang: Of course, I wouldn’t say it’s completely failed, but in any case, they never reached the Hsinchu heights. That’s correct. That’s the artifact because it was proposed, not because Yi-Lan really needs it, but because the administration at the time wants it.

Philip Epps: The tunnel’s been opened. There’s weekend traffic coming in to Taipei. It’s changing on that level. Tourism and traffic.

Audrey Tang: There is plenty of tourism.

Philip Epps: There aren’t any jobs necessarily. It’s actually impoverished. It’s kind of weird. It’s like this island by itself.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, and the tourists, after the tourists go home, there’s no local industry left.

Philip Epps: When I first sent my link ‑‑ I don’t know if you saw it, but I had a link, Taiwan software development company concept to do VR, film stubs to bring my two worlds together. I haven’t really been able to get any...

Philip Epps: There’s interest, but there is nobody saying, "Yeah, we’ll help you develop, get some venture capital," or something like that. I’m a little bit stuck on that. I don’t know if you have any advice for me.

Audrey Tang: You’ve got a local company set up?

Philip Epps: Not yet, because I don’t really have the funds yet.

Audrey Tang: I see.

Philip Epps: I’m willing to do it myself, but I think it’s much more collaborative to do it with private sector.

Audrey Tang: Most of the investment funds from the National Development Council targets local startups.

Philip Epps: You mean Taiwanese startups?

Audrey Tang: Taiwanese startups, exactly.

Philip Epps: What if I don’t have a Taiwanese partner?

Audrey Tang: Then that works. You can apply for one of the SBIR or something plans. That would help to further your goals. There’s some red tape involved. I’m not saying it’s completely...

Philip Epps: More than some, probably. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Exactly. I’m aware of this issue. We’re simplifying it. It’s not like we’re doing nothing. I understand it.

Philip Epps: I didn’t mean to imply you’re not doing anything. It takes time.

Audrey Tang: It’s not just time. It’s also getting the current Korea public servants to shift from a subsidizing or reimbursing mentality to a collaboration or investment, angel‑level mentality. These two are actually very different.

Audrey Tang: Of course, we set...We had our previous batch. It’s all reimbursement and subsidy. Now we’re switching to the second batch, and it’s zero dollars subsidy and reimbursement, all investment. You can take much more risk, and then you don’t have to do a lot of red tape and so on.

Philip Epps: Big change.

Audrey Tang: It is a big change. Then we have to get Korea public servants on board for that to happen. There won’t be as much red tape happening, but you do need to fit into one of the so‑called investors themes for the NDC. All the relevant information is online.

Audrey Tang: There’s also a comparable sized fund for social enterprises, which is the one that I’m more familiar with. There’s less people applying though, because so‑called social enterprises is currently ‑‑ actually, a large part of it ‑‑ is done by MPOs and by people who are not companies, and therefore it doesn’t really want investments.

Audrey Tang: They really do want subsidies. We’re still balancing that. If you’re just doing entrepreneurship stuff, then the first fund that I mentioned has recently shifted to be investment.

Philip Epps: For Taiwanese only?

Audrey Tang: For Taiwanese only, I’m sorry.

Philip Epps: What about private sector?

Audrey Tang: What about private sector?

Philip Epps: Because that doesn’t have anything to do...

Audrey Tang: My connection to the private sector is to the Silicon Valley private sector. It’s not to the Taiwan private sector.

Philip Epps: That’s what you’re aiming, is to bring a bit of that cake here.

Audrey Tang: Sure. Of course, you can talk with ASVDA. This is one of the possibilities. They do have this...

Philip Epps: That’s you, right? You’re advising.

Audrey Tang: No, we’re at arm’s length. I do strategy. High‑level strategies are done. We review every three months or something, but the day‑to‑day operation is entirely in the hands of the C‑suite. That’s the CEO and the commission, and also the C‑suite people.

Audrey Tang: We don’t actually interfere in any way with the very independently operating ASVDA agency, we just review its results quarterly or so.

Philip Epps: Can you recommend? Can you suggest? Can you say, "Hey, talk to this guy. Have a meeting with him."

Audrey Tang: I’m sure that they already have a telephone line or an email. Of course, you’re free to CC me or whatever. The other issue is, of course, we will have a public transcript. After you confirm with them, you can have a URL of your discussion with me, and then send as an attachment or something.

Philip Epps: Sweet. What’s working the best in your mind, of the record? I know we’re on the record, but what’s really happening? I’m acting like a journalist now, but what’s the sweet spot?

Audrey Tang: In what?

Philip Epps: In all your activities now. Where you see the most progress.

Audrey Tang: In my activities?

Philip Epps: There are challenges. You’ve got legacy government bureaucracy, red tape, etc., laws.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s fine. It’s all like that.

Philip Epps: The world is changing so fast, and Taiwan’s kind of behind the curve, isn’t it?

Audrey Tang: Depending on which curve you’re looking at.

Philip Epps: What if you compare Berlin, compare London, compare Seattle.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but you mention cities. Taiwan’s not really a city.

Philip Epps: For Asia.

Audrey Tang: The thing is that Berlin is Berlin. Everywhere around Berlin, the counties and so on, they’re not moving as fast as Berlin. What we’re seeing is the first tier of super‑connected super‑cities that are, as you said, moving very fast, and also free economic zones. The one in, for example, in Korea, is moving very fast, but kind of leaving its vicinities behind.

Philip Epps: Would that be something possible to have here, where you could have the digital nomad land, and get to work?

Audrey Tang: You mean a free economic zone?

Philip Epps: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: The previous administration tried that idea. It got shut down by the general populace, so no.

Philip Epps: Why, though?

Audrey Tang: Why, though? Because the young people here, they want a free economic zone that could at the same time solve the inequality problem. That is to say social enterprise oriented.

Philip Epps: In salaries...

Audrey Tang: In salaries, social housing, everything. They don’t want something that would enable just one percent of the young populace who has the good English.

Philip Epps: You mean the digital side?

Audrey Tang: The digital elite, basically.

Philip Epps: You have to start somewhere, right?

Audrey Tang: No, it’s a left/right decision. In any case, I’m not taking sides for socialist or capitalists. I’m anarchist, by the way. My political agenda is just to get the civil society and the private sector to do as much work that currently the public sector is doing as possible, until there comes a day where we don’t need governments anymore. That’s my agenda.

Audrey Tang: On the issue of left and right, I don’t really have a position.

Philip Epps: I’m just talking about a new economic, capitalistic world, which is changing. It’s much more digital. I feel education is the answer to the young people who aren’t digitally inclined, or who don’t speak English.

Audrey Tang: Which part of the ASVDA plan aims to have this virtual academy and a very fast Internet connectivity, which by the way, Taiwan is in the top spot too, in the world for those last‑mile broadband readiness.

Audrey Tang: In theory, we can get all the people in all counties everywhere to use VR to study IoT, to study all kinds of hands‑on curriculum, and then become empowered. We’re doing that as well. That is much more welcome than an economic zone part of...

Philip Epps: The whole island would be one big economic zone.

Audrey Tang: That’s the idea, including remote islands.

Philip Epps: You won’t be separating anybody.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Philip Epps: When do you think that utopia will happen. I’m an anarchist too.

Audrey Tang: It’s good. We’re proposing a special budget plan just for furthering that because our regular budget is multiyear. They don’t really contain sufficient funds for working toward that direction.

Philip Epps: What is that like, five‑year plan or something?

Audrey Tang: It’s a four‑year plan for the digital part, but the total plan is 880 billions NT dollars. It’s some amount of money. You can locate the whole plan ‑‑ at infrastructure.ey.gov.tw. There’s this huge amount of pages and PDF files, but it’s in Chinese.

Philip Epps: In Chinese, yeah.

Audrey Tang: Thank you, yes.

Philip Epps: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I think automatic translation would probably work pretty well for things like these, in any case. The digital part is just one part of it. There’s five parts in this special budget plan. We just sent it out to the legislation last week.

Audrey Tang: If they do approve it, we do hope to get this done in the next four years, which is about my term, anyway. If we don’t get this special budget, then we have to work with regular budgets, eight years at least, to do more or less the same thing. We see a special budget as a booster.

Philip Epps: What are your plans after four years?

Audrey Tang: I don’t know.

Philip Epps: You’re going to run politically or do anything?

Audrey Tang: I’m doing the same thing, whether as a digital minister or not. I’ll probably still do open government work and stuff, but whatever title, I don’t really care.

Philip Epps: Thank you for your time.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s a pleasure.

Philip Epps: I’m definitely going to be checking your site out. One comment on English here. There’s a simple, fairly inexpensive thing that Hong Kong did, basically because of their history and culture with the British.

Philip Epps: They committed funds to have every government document and every transaction, everything, perfectly translated.

Audrey Tang: I’m aware of that.

Philip Epps: Right now, you get on the Chinese side, and there’s pages and pages online, and then there’s the sentence...

Audrey Tang: In our own website, PDIS.tw, we have a English website. We don’t have anything else. This is our team’s website. It’s completely in English. For the Chinese‑speaking people, we have Google Translate to translate it to Chinese, and leave it at that.

Audrey Tang: Machine translation is actually getting...

Philip Epps: Getting better.

Audrey Tang: ...really, really good, especially for the Chinese‑English pair, so that we can get away with this.

Philip Epps: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: We’re pretty unusual in that. For many other governmental websites, as you said, it’s like that.

Philip Epps: You go English first.

Audrey Tang: If you go Chinese first, what I’m saying is that machine translation is at a point where you can get OK English, it just don’t feel as good. We’ll continue making our website as planned and then see if other agencies start to catch up.

Philip Epps: Is there any way that you can suggest as a minister to the legislature to say we’re going to make this legal binding thing, where we have a team of translators going 24/7 making sure every government within the whole world sees Taiwan? Right now, the world sees this much Taiwan. I’m all about imaging and messaging.

Audrey Tang: I think it will need a lot of machine learning AI work. I do believe in getting better AI translators as a professional translator myself.

Philip Epps: This is an old‑school advocacy. When you face Singapore and Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, and you get that perfectly official translation, legally accountable, it’s not the same thing as they got right now.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s about three percent different. We’re working on that, but it’s getting really close. That’s because of a few breakthroughs that happened just a couple of months ago. We’re getting on that.

Audrey Tang: The whole idea is of course you have to have professional proofreaders who are preferably native speakers, instead of just Taiwanese people who learn English. The professional proofreader is one thing. It’s another thing to have a good enough translation AI that could magically make all the websites.

Audrey Tang: We’re partnering with some private sector people to do that. That will be one of my priorities this year, is to automate the hell out of those manual stuff. I am working on that.

Philip Epps: Incredible. Good stuff. When can I see my transcript?

Audrey Tang: Like, I don’t know, 24 hours depending on how fast the AI works.

Philip Epps: Great. [laughs] You think that the AI is still the answer, is the future answer?

Audrey Tang: No, it’s the first pass. It saves repetitive work.

Philip Epps: You want to keep this?

Audrey Tang: Sure. Of course, we’ll still need humans to proofread it, in which case you are to proofread it for your own use. [laughs]

Philip Epps: It’s still a slight difference, even if it’s only three percent accuracy level, it’s not the official government...It’s not what Hong Kong does.

Audrey Tang: I know.

Philip Epps: I’m an advocate for Taiwan. I think that’s something that...

Audrey Tang: The thing is that if we solve this through AI...

Philip Epps: It wouldn’t cost that much money, though.

Audrey Tang: ...we also solve that for...

Philip Epps: You’re 80 percent there, but then you have to...

Audrey Tang: We also solve that for Philippines, Tagalog, and the other southbound languages. The whole idea is to make the government websites multilingual so that no matter which language you are, you see it in your native language.

Audrey Tang: English is one way of doing this, but in our southbound strategy, many of our trading partners actually prefer their local language over English for many of trade related things. We do have to take that into consideration also.

Philip Epps: English being the lingua franca of the whole world so that...

Audrey Tang: For science and technology, of course.

Philip Epps: I’m a little biased.

Audrey Tang: For business, we do a lot of business with the French office in Taiwan, and by necessity, we use English for a lot of documents, but they always prefer if we have French versions and so on. This is a political, it’s not a technical issue. We’ll do what we can do.

Philip Epps: Is it political? It seems a little bit like that is just an issue of about finance that it would have to be included in the budget. Here is the situation that I see today. You’re very optimistic, and I love your progressive view on things, but right now, there’s two kinds of businesses in Taipei.

Philip Epps: There’s local, and then there is something called international, which is where they still speak Chinese in the office, and yet a lot of business is done in English. There’s meetings, and news coming in.

Philip Epps: It’s totally not on the level of where I’ve worked in Singapore and in Hong Kong, where people were having small talk and such in English. We’re just not there yet.

Audrey Tang: I think the machine translation’s pretty good now, seriously. We’re not Hong Kong or Singapore, that’s for sure.

Philip Epps: Not that you want to be, but that’s the one thing I think in Asia...

Audrey Tang: At some point, the previous administration wanted to be.

Philip Epps: Was it too expensive?

Audrey Tang: There are mayors who still look up to Singapore to say that this is the destination where we’re going to. After Sunflower Movement, 2014, I think the general populace just said, "You know, it’s better to have equality first."

Philip Epps: I was just talking about English.

Audrey Tang: I know, but equality among diverse linguistic groups, so that they would now insist not just we translate into Philippines or French, but also to Hakka, and Hoklo, and other Han ethnic groups in Taiwan. They’re language too.

Philip Epps: The script is always Chinese to Chinese.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s the Han script, but the words are different. It’s not entirely legible, and that’s not mentioning the aboriginal languages, of which there are many. We’re also working on machine translation for them.

Audrey Tang: The point, when I talk about equality, it not just about economic equality, but cultural equality as well. There’s a fundamental difference in this particular cabinet of the attitudes around...The economic development is of course they’re very important, but it’s second place to fairness and cultural diversity.

Philip Epps: What? Really?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Philip Epps: People are hurting.

Audrey Tang: I know, but you see that in the campaign. The KMT was putting this economy first.

Philip Epps: They failed miserably. It was all about relations with China. That’s why they...

Audrey Tang: If you see the economic development as the first priority goal, and China being this huge, growing market, of course you will want to find other trade agreements with China. It’s reasonable choice in any case.

Philip Epps: I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I agree with you. I just think that the Kuomintang was wrong into saying only relations with China was going to make the economy better here. Obviously, they failed.

Audrey Tang: They’re also developing ties with US and with many other countries. I think it’s mostly the economy first strategy and message in a sense that causes this tremendous election result, because this administration was elected on the principle of fairness and diversity.

Audrey Tang: When we do economic development, we have a lot more things to consider, is what I’m saying. It’s not saying this is not important.

Philip Epps: OK, thank you for clarifying. Also, environmental concerns, so to speak. It’s pretty complicated.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Also, diversity with the ecosystem, and sustainability, and climate change, and everything.

Philip Epps: You have a lot of work to do. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s interesting.

Philip Epps: I sure appreciate your time. I’ve learned a lot. Thank you so much, and I look forward to our transcript. I’ll definitely be looking at some of the websites you showed.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Audrey Tang: Cheers.

Philip Epps: Bye‑bye.