Audrey Tang: OK. Let’s begin.

Giannis Tsioulis: Let’s begin. To begin with, I would like to know your preferred pronouns so we won’t have any…

Audrey Tang: Whatever.

Giannis Tsioulis: Whatever. Amazing. Let’s start with a Taiwanese success story during the pandemic. You tackled the health crisis without limiting democratic rights and without lockdowns. Can you tell us, in a nutshell, how could this even be possible?

Audrey Tang: Certainly. We managed to counter the pandemic with no lockdown the same way we managed the infodemic, the disinformation crisis, without takedowns. In many jurisdictions, when it enters the widespread community spread, it’s too late, so people thought that lockdown or takedown is the only choice that they have.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we had experienced in 2003 when SARS hit Taiwan, the epidemic, we already had a lockdown of the entire hospital, the helping hospitals. People understand that as a mental health was very traumatic experience, and we are committed to not to repeat that.

Audrey Tang: Because of that three-pronged approach, first, a very strict border quarantine. I just returned from Italy to Taiwan, and I’m on day three of my seven-day quarantine. Starting tomorrow, we’re down to three days quarantine. For a very long time, in Taiwan, very strict quarantine on the border is enforced.

Audrey Tang: Second is that in addition to early detection, we also use contact tracing very aggressively. People for more than a year have to either write their contact number, or to check in using the QR codes on the venue using their phone, no app required, or use Bluetooth. There are three different contact tracing methods.

Audrey Tang: At the end of the day, they shortened the notification period from more than 24 hours — which will be too late for the Delta variant — to less than 24 minutes, almost all automated. Because of that, people were able to get notification before they were infected.

Audrey Tang: That’s the second thing is the contact tracing. The third thing is just good habits. People wear their mask not because they want to obey anything. For the longest time in most of 2020, we didn’t impose a fine on not wearing a mask, but rather people wear it because they know it protects their own face against their own unwashed hands.

Audrey Tang: They wear it because it’s pink, it’s rainbow, it’s sense of self-expression and observed the hand washing, and so on, reminding each other that the mask is there for you to wash your hands before touching your face. That, of course, also is a very successful NPI.

Giannis Tsioulis: Do you think though that the success lies with Taiwanese people? Do you think that this module could be implemented around the globe with so many different cultures and nations with larger populations?

Audrey Tang: Definitely, because we also did quite badly in SARS. It showed that our central government and local government did not have coordination. It showed that the ministries did not have the awareness, the common sense of urgency or clarity.

Audrey Tang: We learned from our mistakes. It’s like societal inoculation. People collectively learnt, maybe have a paper-based health card is not the best thing during the time of epidemic, the small pilot at Pescadores, the Penghu Island at a time for the IC card based health card. After SARS, it just became the national standard.

Audrey Tang: There’s no cybersecurity or privacy incidents in the past 15 years. This time around, we’re very reliant on the IC card-based healthcare card that covers not just citizens, but also residents. We use that for mask rationing, for rapid testing rationing, for vaccination appointment, just for everything.

Audrey Tang: I think many jurisdictions now, after postponing the pandemic for now, are also looking at the same sort of digitalization of the healthcare system, the modernization of the notification system so much so that many jurisdictions are now considering this information system, critical infrastructure or national infrastructure, just like we learned in 2003.

Giannis Tsioulis: The pandemic was a health crisis for population around the globe, but was also a pandemic for democracies, with governments around the world turning to authoritarian practices to keep people safe. Do you think that this has set a bad precedent on how to deal with a crisis like this when they arise?

Audrey Tang: It also allows relatively smaller economies and jurisdictions to shine on the global stage when we proved that it is possible to have state capacity to deliver outcomes that meet the challenge of our time.

Audrey Tang: I was giving a speech in the new local conference in the UK. I said, if you think Taiwan is too out there too strange, just call it a New Zealand model, we don’t care. It’s the same model. While as you said, in many jurisdictions, there are democracy in backslide, like the state capacity failing to deliver.

Audrey Tang: We also have shining examples from previously relatively unknown jurisdiction that are now hailed as the golden standard for the next pandemic.

Giannis Tsioulis: One of the many issues that modern democracies face is the lack of confidence of people in their governments. In your talks, you often talk about neutral fundamental trust between the government and the people.

Giannis Tsioulis: How can governments restore the credibility with the people and is even possible at this point, when capitalism seems to be broken and not working on so many levels for so many different people around the world?

Audrey Tang: To give no trust is to get no trust. It’s important that the state trust the citizens before the citizens are asked to trust the state. That is to say, trustworthiness need to be earned.

Audrey Tang: I often say that democracy operates previously on a very slow bandwidth. If you vote among eight candidates, there’s just three bits, very high latency, meaning every four years or two years, and also a very small connection.

Audrey Tang: Many people who don’t have the vote or do not want to go to the vote, their voice is not heard. They’re ignored like the immigrants, the young people, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Because of doubts, what we need to do is to improve the bandwidth of democracy, so that people can express their full preference spectrum. We’ve seen participatory budgeting, e-petitions, Presidential Hackathon.

Audrey Tang: Many models that Taiwan joined also spread across the globe, so that people can have a continuous integration toward democracy, even as simple as picking up a toll-free number and speaking your mind about counter epidemics. That’s the bandwidth.

Audrey Tang: Low latency meaning once a very good idea surfaced, like the visualization of mask rationing map, like wearing pink mask in sibling, we implement that within 24 hours.

Audrey Tang: People are used to, at most, weekly continuous integration when genuinely our shortcomings are pointed out like data bias, and so on. Like we always say, next Thursday, next Thursday.

Audrey Tang: By next Thursday, we change our algorithms in our platform so that it reflects the latest learnings by the citizens. Citizens won’t feel that, I have to wait for four years to vote another person into the presidency in order to implement the changes I want.

Audrey Tang: Because of those toll-free numbers, online petition systems, and so on, do not limit to only adults with a citizenship. Literally, anyone with a SMS SIM card registering in Taiwan, including immigrant workers and very young people can also have their say.

Giannis Tsioulis: I wanted to ask you, you have also lived in the US, and you know the society there and the differences and the approaches in personal beliefs in politics about society.

Giannis Tsioulis: Do you think a large society like the US that defines the Western culture in a way and sets the example for the whole world, could follow this more approach of trust with the people?

Audrey Tang: In the very beginning of the pandemic, I’ve worked with, for example, the chief innovation officer of New Jersey, Beth Noveck to get some of the real-time Q&A and stuff on their platform in New Jersey. Of course, Beth is the expert internationally open government and citizen engagement.

Audrey Tang: We’ve also seen like the state of California, there’s many people who crowdsourced the vaccination and information websites for people to get informed, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Later on, these civic technologies we’ll work with the federal government to deliver the rapid testing kits via US Postal Service to people, and so on. That’s the successful integration of civic capability into state capacity. I see there are packets of good all across the US.

Audrey Tang: Taiwan by population or land area is just one of the small to medium-sized states, I wouldn’t say that our model will necessarily work on the federal level.

Audrey Tang: However, if it has some success in some of the smaller or medium-sized states, I’m sure that it will sooner or later enter into the mainstream conversation as the area raccoon of possibility.

Giannis Tsioulis: I want to ask you is your personal success story a prove that our educational systems are obsolete, they need to be reset completely to provide people with this necessary knowledge to form a modern democratic society.

Audrey Tang: I must say that even though I drop out of the middle-high school, it was with the full blessing of the head of my school and my teachers. I almost immediately enrolled — without a formal diploma — but audited a nearby university to work with first undergrad, then graduate-level study.

Audrey Tang: Without the academic community of formal higher education, I would not have the access of the community to learn so much. I wouldn’t say that they’re obsolete.

Audrey Tang: However, I would say that I am more of a peer-to-peer, equal relationship with the researchers, because I’m not dependent on them to give me examination, to score me, to give me a diploma, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Rather, they’re interested in researching about swift trust. About how people come to trust each other so quickly on the Internet, and lose that trust equally quickly. I’m interested in that, too. That means that I’m like a researcher but more junior, [laughs] and they’re also a researcher but more senior. There’s less teaching, but more learning together.

Giannis Tsioulis: I have read that you identify as an anarchist, as an independent. You believe in conservative anarchism as a way to have a more humanistic approach to modern democracy.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Giannis Tsioulis: Which of these are precise characterizations? What does it actually mean in terms of government policies?

Audrey Tang: I could also call myself a spiritual Taoist. For many Western audience, that means I write some rights and perform folk religion rights, and communicate with the dead. I don’t do that. [laughs] While I can say I’m a spiritual Taoist, I didn’t mean it in a folk religion sense, with all due respect.

Audrey Tang: To say conservative is to respect what already is. The Taoist idea is the Tao follows what is natural. In Taiwan, we have 20 national languages including the sign language, and many of which, indigenous. Each language represent a way of life, a cultural norm.

Audrey Tang: To be progressive in a Western way is to set back, to decimate the autonomy and the cultural traditions of those 20 very different cultures. To conserve them in the original sense is to honor this diversity and plurality in these traditions.

Audrey Tang: Now, the anarchism part means that I do not give orders. I do not take orders. I only work on the basis, as I mentioned, among equals, voluntary collaboration. Because I don’t give or take orders, I don’t use coercion as a way to force compliance.

Audrey Tang: Rather, I always try to make grounds for the common values, and deliver innovations upon those common values. That’s the original definition of anarchism. I must always say to Westerners I’m not throwing bombs. This is not [laughs] the main association.

Giannis Tsioulis: I want you to tell me, do you feel that capitalism works on a global scale? Instead of overturning it in a radical way, are you trying to set an example on a new approach about how societies and nations can operate in a more democratic way?

Audrey Tang: Yes, there are a couple of things. When we say capitalism, we often mean that a market that tend to concentrate the wealth, concentrate the decision-making power, and so on. It’s a little bit like statism with the idea being the state authority grows and grows without the checks and balances.

Audrey Tang: Now, market is a good check and balance to authorize authoritarian states. If a state try to do things that are more draconian like locking down on an extended period, ignoring human rights, the market leaves [laughs] that jurisdiction. In a sense, the capital is checking and balancing the authoritarian regimes.

Audrey Tang: On the other hand, when capitalism grows out of hand, sometimes, the democratically-elected governance system must also be there to impose. For example, the Digital Services Act currently being deliberated in the EU is one way to counter against surveillance capitalism.

Audrey Tang: I am not like, “Capitalism is good. Market is good. State is bad.” I’m not like, “State is good, and capitalism is bad.” I’m like, “They’re good only when they check and balance each other, so neither of which grow into a leviathan, and allow the social sector to thrive.”

Audrey Tang: If one is strong and the others are weak, there is no room for civil society and social sector, which is a sector that I care primarily about.

Giannis Tsioulis: In a more philosophical notion, I want to ask you, do you think that power corrupts people? People governed inevitably will be corrupted from their power they gain from the people? Can someone have power, and have actual respect for the people they govern on?

Audrey Tang: There are power that are within a network that is to say forced-obey of the coercion of the top-down rule in a top-down hierarchy. That’s a kind of power.

Audrey Tang: On the other hand, there are also network-making power that is to say the power to convene. The power to connect people who previously wasn’t aware of each other. Actually, the kind of software we’re using now, video conferencing software holds that power. It has many functionalities.

Audrey Tang: If I speak in a language you don’t understand, it can automatically recognize my speech and caption it for you, or even automatically translate for you or connect us to an interpreter. We would not say that the video conferencing software holds power over us, it’s imperial. [laughs] We don’t say that.

Audrey Tang: Obviously, it holds power, because without such intermediate networks, we cannot convey our thoughts to each other. We’ll be separated by distance, and so on. It certainly is powerful in a communication power sense, but the power that it exercises is limited by the check and balances of the fundamental Internet ideas of end-to-end innovation.

Audrey Tang: If we find that this platform is locking us in, it’s very simple to go back to the decentralized platform called the email. I can email you saying, “Let’s go to the other platform,” [laughs] and then we’re not beholden to the lock-in power.

Audrey Tang: It’s quite obvious that when the power is communication power, it’s network-making power, and situated in a Internet work that allows true end-to-end innovation. Then, the power is checked and balanced by its surrounding networks, and can never grow into lock-in power if we concentrate on making sure that the choices are possible.

Giannis Tsioulis: Does this apply as well to elected politicians? We have seen people being elected from the people. In fact, on terms when they take over power, they have authoritarian processes and don’t work in favor for the many.

Audrey Tang: Most of which are doing OK in their first few years. The problem [laughs] becomes when they try to change their rules, and renew indefinitely their position of power. That becomes a problem because every single individual have a peak state. As years go by, naturally, people get older and become less peak.

Audrey Tang: If during their peak years, they invest their political capital and energy so that they can remain powerful ever, then, of course, the country and the nearby country suffers. Then, it becomes less peak in judgment, and so on, but people are stuck with such a ruler as we have seen in certain geopolitical situations this year. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: What we’re trying to say is that the democratic check and balance is also temporal in a sense that we need to establish a very strong norm. That no matter how brilliant the president or prime minister is, they only have eight years in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Even though that we’re facing geopolitical challenges like real urgency, nobody would say, “Let’s give Dr. Tsai Ing-wen four more years, because she’s already on her second term.” That is the fundamental of democracy.

Giannis Tsioulis: I want you to tell me the definition of digital democracy. What does a digital minister like you actually does when you don’t have a specific portfolio, and the areas of government you’re involved are ever-expanding?

Audrey Tang: Starting from September, we will have a dedicated ministry for digital affairs called the MODA, Ministry of Digital Affairs.

Audrey Tang: It’s defined as a combination between the part of National Communications Commission that provides spectrum strategy resilience, low-Earth orbit, Starlink, all those things.

Audrey Tang: Then also the part of National Development Council that consist open data, share data, privacy-enhancing technologies, data all trees and work. That’s the data portfolio and digital service, of course, for the public sector.

Audrey Tang: Also, the part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs open-source software platform, economy on so-called Web3, and things like that. Like chips but defined bits that is the economic part.

Audrey Tang: Finally, the department in cybersecurity will be promoted into administration for cybersecurity in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Is these four-part, the resilience part, the data-based plural innovation part, the digital and data platform economy part, and the cybersecurity part that go together into the new Ministry of Digital Affairs.

Giannis Tsioulis: Your digital democracy sounds a lot like an evolved strength from the represented democracies that most nations have. Is there a danger to become populist majoritarian in terms of never being able to make actual decisions?

Audrey Tang: I think for us, it’s not about decisions. Most of our digital platforms is about co-discovery, co-design of what’s possible, instead of jumping straight to decisions.

Audrey Tang: Although we do have elections and referendums that happen on intervening years. At this year is the election year for mayors, next year will be referendum, and the next is presidential, and then referendum, and so on, we do our digital democracy in the intervening times.

Audrey Tang: The national-level election or referendum happens every year, but during the part of the year that doesn’t have the campaign elections, that’s when we have most of our participatory budget, Presidential Hackathon, and things like that.

Audrey Tang: Collectively, they define the societal priority of what’s important for the people who start referendums or to run for public offices to look at. This is not trying to replace representational democracy. This is to give higher quality input into representational democracy.

Audrey Tang: At the end of the day, the budget is still overseen by the legislature. In our case, because I’m a double appointee, people elect directly the president, who appoint the premier, who appoints me. Among the colleagues in the ministers-at-large space, nine of us, seven, doesn’t have a party affiliation.

Audrey Tang: Even for the vertical ministries, 32 of them, there’s more independent members than members of any party. This pre-drafting, pre-legislature stage removed from party politics is where participatory democracy can grow. At the end of the day, we produce just drafts and then to the legislature for the four major parties to have their partisan conversations.

Giannis Tsioulis: Digital democracy is about people having the opportunity to advise the government in a way, but they’re not actually involved in more fundamental policy making such as budgeting the state.

Audrey Tang: For participatory budgeting, of course many municipalities carve out specific ratios of budget. That also counts as direct input. You’re correct. Most of the budget is still in the hands of legislature. The most important part of co-creation comes when the citizens realize that this particular thing, for example fact-checking in the online journalism, should not be a state budget.

Audrey Tang: If the state runs the budget to fact-check the journalists, then we go to the authoritarian model. Rather, the citizens should crowd source, should solicit donations. The state should make sure that we just hold the social media to account.

Audrey Tang: They must respond to the fact-checkers independently from the citizen civic media, to run the public notice when they discover something is actually a propaganda/disinformation, to disseminate humor over rumor, and so on. The state must not step in and say, “Let’s just take down this media.”

Audrey Tang: While the budget is part of the state power, the co-creation from the digital democracy platforms can delineate the boundary. The state doesn’t need to enter because the civic power, the social innovators, already took care of that part.

Giannis Tsioulis: I want to ask you if digital democracy can work in the era of tech giants, where not even our privacy is secured for people using the Internet.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think the tech giants, in my mind are like large nightclubs in the district of entertainment. That is to say they build addiction so that young people should really get advice before they glue to the touchscreens and so on because it’s really addictive.

Audrey Tang: You have to shout to get heard. It’s a smoke-filled room, private bouncer ready to escort you out, if you say something wrong, and so on. I mean this is mainly a place for fun for adults, but in a democracy, we need equally the digital equivalent of public parks, of town halls, of museums, libraries.

Audrey Tang: Those public and civic places that allow for more scalable listening and deliberation just as we wouldn’t bring our town hall and our mayor to the nightclub where people get very rowdy. Then, we say, “Oh, is democracy possible in the era of rowdy nightclubs.”

Audrey Tang: Maybe [laughs] we should not use that place in the first place to democracy. This kind of investing in the infrastructure, in the digital realm, on the public bureaus and the civic infrastructure, that is very important.

Audrey Tang: Since 2016, we’ve classified that sort of thing as also public infrastructure, money and qualify for infrastructure funding, even though it’s not concrete, not made out of concrete.

Giannis Tsioulis: You’ve worked in Silicon Valley, and I assume you have seen firsthand the corporate greed. Can simply governments around the world try and control the power clangor of these tech giants, or can it only be achieved if countries would collectively around the globe impose regulations as tight as the Taiwanese government on a specific company.

Giannis Tsioulis: Does it even matter when all the other countries allow these regulations to happen?

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, if you get into a car accident and you test positive for above a certain threshold for alcohol in your blood, then it’s mandatory to install a alcohol lock in your car. The next time you drive, you have to prove to the machine that you are not inebriated. I’m sure that many jurisdictions do that.

Audrey Tang: It used to be, that the liquor companies many years ago, are considered too big to fail. There’s even constitutional level like prohibition, like a lock down, that people think is the only course towards freedom from alcohol, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, we take a more civilized view. We know that unlimited alcohol consumption, the damage it takes, the harm it takes, but it’s precisely because everyone, especially young children, now understand the social and mental harm, overconsumption can bring about.

Audrey Tang: The society has already reoriented ourselves around the norm of responsible use of alcohol. Now, currently, touchscreen addiction is currently not as high on people’s mind as alcohol is clearly a public mental health harm.

Audrey Tang: If we continue our digital competence and seek out alternatives, platforms that allows this kind of civitates discourse without having to go to advertisement, few surveillance, capitalism, then people can learn that, “Oh, there are also other enjoyable things that people can do together, you can throw a party, with minors without alcohol.”

Audrey Tang: I always drink alcohol-free drinks, and they taste also very good, allows me to communicate about the taste, and so on without getting inebriated myself. That was also because people invested a lot of time into finding the alternatives. The same goes for cruelty free meat, synthetic meat, and things like that.

Audrey Tang: For each externality, we can invest a lot of time and energy into turning the public harm into something that people notice, but also to develop alternatives that doesn’t cause as much harm.

Giannis Tsioulis: How can digitally democracy work in the age of trolls where people channel their frustration online, creating extremely toxic environments on the Internet?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the platform that we use, the Join platform, the Polis platform, always have the commonality that we learn from the Iceland capital, Reykjavik, in there we don’t have a reply button.

Audrey Tang: You can upvote and downvote, but you cannot attack each other. That is to say we allow more synthesis of pro-social sentiments that lets people criticize the arguments or each other’s proposals, but because there’s no reply button, there’s no way to vent their frustration against the other person. Because of that, it is very difficult to get polarized in the Polis or Join platforms. It is by design.

Audrey Tang: However, in more anti-social corner of social media, maybe they want this kind of personal attacks so that it can trigger notifications and also impulse buying, panic buying, and things like that. It’s to their advantage. At least in our digital democracy spaces, we do not configure our space to encourage such panics.

Giannis Tsioulis: Do you think the people in the world can keep up with your radical, innovating, forward way of thinking or super conservative personal beliefs can be an obstacle and alienate people from joining this new type of democracy?

Audrey Tang: I’m not forcing anyone. That’s the whole point of voluntary association. What I’m trying to do is like Buckminster Fuller’s idea, I just make new systems that very gradually, over generations, may make the old system obsolete. I’m not disrupting, fighting the old system. You will notice that I speak nothing about obsoleting the members of the parliament.

Audrey Tang: I didn’t say that we need to replace our candidates with robots. I would never say that. I wouldn’t say that let’s just automate smart cities and that smart citizens become dumb citizens. That’s OK. I won’t say that. I’m always about the plurality, about the co-existence of a diversity of models and the collaboration between those.

Audrey Tang: To the people who are super conservative, I thank them for preserving the tradition. It’s very important tradition. We need to do everything we can to bring the technology to these traditions instead of disrupting those tradition to fit technology.

Giannis Tsioulis: Is peace a requirement for digital democracy world? There are actual wars raging throughout the world from Ukraine to Yemen. You have a complex history with China. Can your humanistic approach to government become a reality around the world? Do you believe that?

Audrey Tang: Democracy itself is a very new thing. Especially in Taiwan, our democracy, the first presidential election popular vote is 1996. That’s already after the Web. In many of the jurisdiction that you mentioned, it also coincides. The Internet coincides with the protest.

Audrey Tang: The protest turned demonstration from a negative one, like demonstrating against something, into a positive one, like the ProZorro system in Ukraine, to demonstrate that a radical transparency is possible in the area of procurement, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, each time that there is a strong counterpower against the authoritarian forces, the counterpower can now tap into the network of democracy that we already have and turn their energy into a creative one that provides possibly better models for other people to consider.

Audrey Tang: I would not say that this is like us exporting a model or anything. This is more like the “be water” philosophy of the Hong Kong demonstration people. People encounter individuals who have personal experience in such deliberative and participatory cultures. They spread the root of those ideas, maybe just in a very small community, maybe in a township, and so on.

Audrey Tang: If sufficient amount of people do that…I go to Africa. I go to many places. I always see those bubble tea stands. I’m sure they didn’t get a license from Taiwan. [laughs] Really, it’s a simple idea that people can put tapioca balls or whatever balls and a local drink – not necessarily a tea, maybe Rooibos – together and make good flavor. Digital democracy is like that.

Giannis Tsioulis: I want you to tell me your personal experience from the transition from the martial law to Taiwanese democracy. You must have been about 10 years old, super young. Do you remember the time when democracy was actually implemented in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: When I was born, I was born into the martial law. Because both my parents are journalists, they routinely get calls by the state censors, the one party, saying that their writing is out of line and things like that.

Audrey Tang: In my dinner table when I was very young, like four or five years old, people were debating whether this new party called the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP, currently the ruling party, is a party or a illegal gathering. [laughs] That was the days.

Audrey Tang: I learned very early on that we rely on international correspondence, Amnesty International, the international human right movement, and even international journalists in Hong Kong who get what’s going on on the ground. Because we’re not allowed to publish that, the journalistic practitioners, including my parents, work with international correspondents.

Audrey Tang: They may publish in Hong Kong or in international media. We can then say it’s international media. What would a local government do? It’s a check and balance on an international level. Nowadays, of course we’re reversing the role vis-à-vis Hong Kong.

Audrey Tang: The point I’m making is that there’s always a international democracy community. People who are even exiles from Taiwan or people who could not do much in Taiwan, but maintains a connection, many time underground connection, with the international community can nevertheless express what’s actually going on, speaking truth to power, but sometimes only in a very roundabout way.

Giannis Tsioulis: I have two more questions, if you would grant me the time?

Audrey Tang: Yes, of course.

Giannis Tsioulis: You have implied that access to technology is a fundamental principle to the notion of democratic society nowadays. How can a global access to technology be achieved when so many nations struggle physically to provide even basic necessities for their people?

Audrey Tang: I think “Broadband as a human right” is the actual quote. We see that in some smaller remote islands, in the higher mountains, in the very rural areas, it used to be true that it was very expensive to set up a microwave communication and so on. It competes with the fund that would go to eliminate poverty for example. I think that’s the point that you’re alluding.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, because storage and computation, general-purpose computation is extremely inexpensive. Taiwan may have some contribution in that.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, it’s no longer a very high ratio of their GDP. The computation technology, the storage, and so on, now cost less and less.

Audrey Tang: Mostly, it’s about communication, the spectrum, as I mentioned, the microwave, or fiber optic lines that are currently puzzling for many governments. Because of that, the low-Earth satellite technologies and many innovative technologies that configures flying balloons, drones, and things like that is actually a solution so that people do not have to choose between investing in spectrum or investing in education.

Audrey Tang: Rather, once you sign up for this low-Earth satellite orbit thing, it’s fundamentally almost zero-cost to set up minimum, solar panel and a receiver that can connect you to the broadband Internet that can power, like one dish can power three villages, as you have seen in Ukraine.

Giannis Tsioulis: Lastly, I want to ask you as a transgender person are LGBTQIA+ rights closer to your heart and your agenda as a politician, and do you follow the policy around the world affecting queer people? I want to also ask you, how is life for queer people in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: I’m very happy to report as a digital minister, I’ve never faced discrimination. Our parliament is more than 40 percent women; our president is 100 percent woman. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Because of that, I think we’re long past the line where people discriminate by gender or something in the political arena. It wasn’t always like that. In my youth, it was taboo to talk about marriage equality and so, in many community, it took decades of work from feminists, from LGBTIQA+ activists to get to this point.

Audrey Tang: I think, across the world, especially around Indo-Pacific, people are seeing Taiwan as an example, that we do not have to disrupt the old family or structure, because when we legalized marriage equality, we say, “Oh, it’s a specific form of wedding between individuals. That is not a marriage between families.”

Audrey Tang: It does not confer kinship relation, but it confers slightly better civil rights to the couple that is wed. You take care of the norms of the older generation, but also the younger generation. This is what I mean by collaboration across diversity.

Audrey Tang: We respect the tradition, the conservative part of the family to family relationship, the kinship people that do not want to disrupt it by the marriage equality. On the other hand, we make sure that the constitutional interpretation is upheld and respected by inventing a new kind of civil relationship.

Audrey Tang: I think this model really inspired many activists. I know personally many activists in Japan that are reading up on the legal and societal strategies that we use and are reporting some very positive developments lately.

Giannis Tsioulis: How did you manage in such a short term, almost something like 30 years to achieve social approval of these? In my mind, a lot of communities in Southeast Asia, they can be a bit super traditional. How did you achieve for them to accept all rights of queer people in general?

Audrey Tang: That’s where the 20 national languages come in. Because in the amiss nation is a matriarchy. In the Taiwan nation debt, our president shares the linage. The chief does not look at gender when choosing successors and so on. We are a transcultural nation that is comprised of many nations.

Audrey Tang: Each nation have a different gender stereotype, a different gender norm. When those norms co-exist we can then see that actually it’s not about one tradition making sure other traditions do not get their expression, but rather how to word our legislation and our constitution so that we can pay respect to all the 20 or more different traditions, while making sure that the human rights is asserted.

Audrey Tang: I think plurality, in this particular configuration is a blessing because it lets us look at far more social innovations in traditions, so that our tradition doesn’t just mean one religion.

Giannis Tsioulis: Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. It was inspiring talking with you. Keep up the amazing work.

Audrey Tang: Thank you, thank you. It was really good questions too.

Giannis Tsioulis: Looking forward to your talk here in Athens in two days.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Giannis Tsioulis: Thank you so much for the time.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Mariza Efstathiou: Thank you, both. It was very, very interesting.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. I have to sign off now. Live long and prosper.

Mariza Efstathiou: Yes, of course. Thank you.

Giannis Tsioulis: Bye.