Ben Blanchard: Good afternoon from Taipei, I am Ben Blanchard, I’m the Reuters Taiwan bureau chief.

Ben Blanchard: We are very happy today to have Minister Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister, joining us for Reuters NEXT.

Ben Blanchard: Minister Tang is a self-described civic hacker. She joined the government in 2016 at the age of 35 and I believe — please correct me if I’m wrong — you are the second youngest ever appointee to the cabinet in Taiwan.

Ben Blanchard: You’re one of the most sort of prominent supporters and proponents of Taiwan on the international stage, so we thank you for joining us today.

Ben Blanchard: If I could go straight into the interview… Next week, you will be representing Taiwan at President Biden’s Democracy Summit along with Ambassador Bí-khîm Hsiao. Could you give us a flavor perhaps of what we’re going to say at that summit and explain to us why you think it’s so important that Taiwan has been invited to participate?

Audrey Tang: Definitely. As the State Department and our Ministry of Foreign Affairs have already shared with the journalistic community, this will be a focus on the human rights and the advance that we make on democracy, especially during the two years of the pandemic and infodemic.

Audrey Tang: I believe the fact that we have countered the pandemic with no lockdown and the infodemic with no takedown shows that, it’s not just about defending democracy in a struggle against authoritarianism, but also about advancing democracy so that the citizens and the governments can enjoy more mutual trust, beginning with the governments trusting our citizens.

Ben Blanchard: Obviously, there’s a lot of international attention on Taiwan at the moment, because of the increased pressure that China is putting on Taiwan, whether it’s military or diplomatic or political.

Ben Blanchard: As you know, the Chinese government is very angry that that Taiwan has been invited to participate. What’s your reaction to that?

Ben Blanchard: I mean, you know there is constant pressure from China and especially the fact that they are so angry that you are going to be participating, that the Taiwan government has been invited to the democracy summit?

Audrey Tang: I think this is the the first round of the Summit for Democracy, but it’s not going to be the last. There will be, in the future, more summit gatherings for democracy.

Audrey Tang: So for all the governments and peoples around the world who feel maybe slighted that they have not been invited as a participant, my suggestion is to double down on realizing democracy, so that maybe by the next round, we will be sharing the same stage.

Ben Blanchard: So you’re basically saying that China really should democratize if it wants to be invited to summits like this?

Audrey Tang: This is a Summit for Democracy, so obviously the participants are all the entities and governments and so on, working to advance democracy – as I call it, a social technology which gets better if more people advance it together.

Ben Blanchard: Are you actually going to Washington for the summit or will you be participating virtually?

Audrey Tang: Well as a digital minister, of course, it’s natural for me to appear digitally as we are having this conversation now. But I also understand that pretty much all of the participants will be digital.

Ben Blanchard: Okay. Now, Minister, one of the the things that you are most well known for in Taiwan is about participatory democracy, about radical transparency and openness.

Ben Blanchard: We obviously exist in a time of extreme disinformation on the Internet. The Taiwanese government complains frequently about disinformation that spreads in Taiwan and a lot of it they say comes from China.

Ben Blanchard: How do you tackle this? I mean, what is your overriding strategy for tackling this and do you believe that you’re winning the war against China?

Audrey Tang: I suppose, when it comes to disinformation, the height of the disinformation campaigns was during 2018-2019.

Audrey Tang: Leading up to our Presidential election January 2020 we have adopted two strategies. One is called “notice and public notice,” which means instead of taking anything down, when we noticed that there were, for example, a trending rumor that’s going viral about painting the protesters from Hong Kong as “rioters that have been paid 20 million to murder the police,” all these of course are not taken down but we work with independent fact checkers, like Tawan Fact Checking Center and so on, members of the International Fact-Checking Network, to trace the origin of that alternate caption.

Audrey Tang: We soon discovered, by the independent journalists, that the photo was real and it was a Reuters photo, but the original Reuters caption said nothing about being paid or murdering police; it just said there were young protesters in Hong Kong.

Audrey Tang: So the alternate caption came from the 中央政法委长安剑 or the central political and law unit from the communist party on their Weibo account.

Audrey Tang: Instead of taking this message down, we just made sure that on the social networks and so on where this message is being spread there is this label and when you share it, that says you know this is sponsored by the 长安剑 as discovered by the Taiwan Fact Checking Center.

Audrey Tang: So it’s not to inhibit the virus of the mind, so to speak, but rather to make inoculation and immunization so that we develop kind of antibodies. It’s like a mRNA strand – to stretch the metaphor a little bit – so that we can actually repackage this this information into something that enhance the resilience and immunity of the entire citizenry.

Audrey Tang: We also use “humor over rumor,” like the very cute spokes dog, Zong Chai, a shiba inu, so pretty much all the central academic command sunshine’s counter disinformation posters are based on this very cute dog as an Internet meme basically, that spreads even faster than outrage.

Ben Blanchard: A lot of this in Taiwan, obviously, is where it’s a very free society here; we’re a democracy with freedom of speech. People are very passionate users of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Ben Blanchard: But China is becoming increasingly good at using these these platforms, which are of course ironically banned in China themselves, to sort of spread its message around the world.

Ben Blanchard: We saw last week, for example, 胡锡进, the editor of the global times was busy attacking President Tsai on Twitter for meeting the Baltic lawmakers.

Ben Blanchard: Do you think that there should be more regulation of social media, especially in the case of China really, to prevent them from abusing these tools?

Audrey Tang: I believe Twitter also adopts the same public notice policy when it comes, for example, to label the state affiliated or sponsored accounts.

Audrey Tang: But more than that, I believe to advance democracy, we need to build our own pro-social social media in conjunction with the democracies around the world.

Audrey Tang: For example, in Taiwan, the Join.gov.tw platform enjoys more than 30 million visits – in a country of 23 million that’s a lot – which was basically based upon Better Reykjavík from Iceland, and CONSUL and Decidim from Spain and Barcelona, and so on.

Audrey Tang: All these international contributions on how to make a prosocial social media made sure that we have the digital equivalent of town halls and public libraries, or university campuses in the case of PTT – our reddit equivalent but with no shareholders or advertisers – so people understand that to talk about public issues there are those digital town squares to talk to, so we’re not forcing our citizens to only have such conversations on the digital equivalent of nightclubs or the entertainment sector which would be like Facebook.

Ben Blanchard: Thank you, Minister, that’s a very interesting point. One of the sort of comments that you’re very famous for, you have a very dry wit, like you talked about using humor to counter some of rumor, yes, using humor to counter rumor.

Ben Blanchard: I remember in 2019 you gave a very witty response to a German reporter when you were asked about when did you know about Taiwan…

Audrey Tang: The neolithic age?

Ben Blanchard: Yes, exactly, it was in the neolithic period that Taiwan broke away from China. do you think that in the international discourse around Taiwan, there’s too much focus about trying to connect Taiwan to China? And that means that Taiwan’s own achievements, its own story, is more difficult for the outside world to hear?

Audrey Tang: Well, when it comes to digital democracy, as I mentioned countering the pandemic, countering the infodemic, and so on, I don’t think there’s so much resistance in the entire world to hear such messages, what we call the “Taiwan model”or “Taiwan can help.”

Audrey Tang: In these contexts – how to counter disinformation using humor, or using “notice and public notice” – it’s so drastically different than the social media sponsored by the state in more authoritarian regimes.

Audrey Tang: In these conversational contexts, I don’t think there’s a risk for Taiwan to be confused with some nearby authoritarian regimes.

Ben Blanchard: Does it frustrate to you personally, that if you look at international media coverage of China, it’s often – especially at the moment with the pressure that Taiwan is facing – that so many of the stories from Taiwan and about Taiwan are ultimately stories about China?

Audrey Tang: Well, as I mentioned, in my domain, which is digital democracy – social innovation, open government, youth engagement and so on – I have not run personally into such conversations.

Audrey Tang: Since you mentioned – I think it was the Deutsche Welle (DW) interview – I only spent maybe two seconds answering that particular question about the neolithic age. The remainder of the conversation…

Audrey Tang: Sorry for that, let’s redo this part. Okay, all right.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s a great question. In my line of work – which is open government, social innovation, and youth engagement – when working with international journalists and correspondents, I don’t think there’s a lot of confusions here.

Audrey Tang: The story was almost never about the Taiwan/Beijing relationships but rather, as I mentioned, about Iceland, Spain, Japan, the U.S. and so on, how those democracies are learning from each other.

Audrey Tang: So I believe that, when the Deutsche Welle (DW)  journalist asked me the question about Hong Kong and digital democracy, I only spent a couple of seconds, kind of brushing off the question about the so-called “breakaway province,” saying that it’s broken away since the Neolithic Age, and then the remainder of that interview was all about the topics that i just talked about and had no bearings about the Beijing relationships.

Ben Blanchard: All right. when you are attending the democracy summit next week, when you’re talking about China’s – sorry, Taiwan’s  – story, but about also disinformation that comes from China, what do you really want the world to know about the situation that you’re facing here, and what lessons do you want the world to take away from your experience, what you’ve been doing in taiwan?

Audrey Tang: It’s a Summit “for” Democracy, right? So while we also talk about how to struggle against authoritarianism or disinformation or the pandemic for that matter, ultimately it is about treating democracy as a kind of social technology that all can contribute to.

Audrey Tang: It’s not just about every person contributing three bits of information every four years – called voting – but rather in a continuous way through petitions, through the sandbox applications, presidential hackathons, participatory budgets, referenda – I can go on – all these ways are to increase the bandwidth of democracy so that the government can respond to people’s needs in the here and now, but also more importantly new innovations can thrive, instead of having to wait for four years.

Audrey Tang: So, to shorten the iteration, to make democracy more rapid, more in the here and now, I believe is my main message.

Ben Blanchard: What are the areas that still sort of concern you about democracy in Taiwan, and sort of what areas do you think you personally in your role still need to improve upon?

Audrey Tang: Definitely. Broadly speaking, there are two main challenges that we’re tackling.

Audrey Tang: One is how to get what we call “good enough consensus” – people’s broad agreements – on the common values in a more predictable and a more quick fashion.

Audrey Tang: I mean, when it comes to fighting the virus or fighting foreign meddling in our election, of course there is common value in the entire citizenry, so it’s rather quick to go to the innovation stage, rather than just talk about the consensus.

Audrey Tang: But if you look at our recent referenda discussions, it’s quite obvious that, because previously all the referenda were tied to election cycles, it naturally takes a more partisan, more polarized tone of conversation.

Audrey Tang: This is actually the first time that we can treat referenda as the subject matters by themselves, instead of tied to particular election cycles about politicians or political parties.

Audrey Tang: So, a culture around a more deliberative tone of democracy, to get a good enough consensus going, I think that is the the main challenge. We’re starting now, with this current referendum, to start to build such a more conversational and deliberative culture.

Audrey Tang: The second challenge is people who don’t even have a vote in the referendum or elections, people younger than 18, who are responsible for more than one quarter of citizens initiatives in our Join.gov.tw platform.

Audrey Tang: Many of the most impactful suggestions – like banning the plastic straws in our signature drink, the bubble tea – came from people younger than 18.

Audrey Tang: So, how to make sure that people younger than 18 think about democracy as something in the here and now, that they can set agenda together and even lead the country’s directions, before getting the right to vote? I believe it’s also very important.

Ben Blanchard: Minister, I think we’re almost at our time limit, I have just…

Audrey Tang: …it’s okay, I don’t have anything afterwards, you can keep doing this and we can edit it down.

Ben Blanchard: I have just one question, which is a slightly lighter question. I know that sometimes in your interviews you like to use the Vulcan expression, “live long and prosper.”

Ben Blanchard: From your personal point of view, you know Star Trek, you know it’s seen as this utopian society, something was very ahead of its time when it came out in the 1960s, certain in terms of things like interracial relationships and stuff.

Ben Blanchard: Do you think there’s a lesson from Star Trek for Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Definitely. I use the Vulcan salute, because I believe it’s a catchier way – I can also talk about “to sustain and to develop,” sustainable development.

Audrey Tang: “To sustain” means “live long” intergenerationally, and to have a “development” is to “prosper” together.

Audrey Tang: I used to wear a pin here, the SDGs pin, with all the 17 colors, that talks about the sustainability and development not as two diametrically opposing things, but as two things that can be joined together in a shared vision, so we can advance sustainability and development together.

Audrey Tang: “Advancing the future generations without sacrificing the current generation and vice versa” – it’s very long, it’s a mouthful, so I’ve shortened it to simply “live long and prosper,” which to me symbolizes sustainability and development.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, previously it was quite easy to portray a public conversation – around, for example, a public construction – as kind of a trade-off between sustainability on one side and the development on the other; the environmental and economic interests were seen as in this tug of war.

Audrey Tang: But now, using new ideas, including impact investing and circular economy, we are now seeing new innovations that can advance those two values together.

Audrey Tang: It’s not only a lesson for Taiwan to learn but also in the spirit of building back better, taking care of our planets with net zero emissions, this is a lesson that I think all should learn.

Ben Blanchard: Minister, is there a particular Star Trek character, for example Spock, that you have found personally inspirational?

Audrey Tang: Well, I found the entire worldbuilding to be inspirational. I can’t say that I identify with any particular character, but of course, “live long and prosper,” I first saw it from Spock.

Ben Blanchard: Minister, thank you very much for joining us today. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. Live long and prosper.