Zeinab Badawi: Welcome to this special edition of “HARDtalk” with me, Zeinab Badawi, from the Taiwanese capital, Taipei. People here in Taiwan which is self-governed live under a constant threat from China which lies about 160 kilometers across the waters.

Zeinab Badawi: Beijing claims Taiwan is part of its territory and in the past few months has carried out hundreds of military sources near Taiwan leading to speculation that it is preparing for an invasion. Taiwan has also been subjected to cyberattacks from China. My guest is the Taiwanese digital minister, Audrey Tang. Can Taiwan really forge its own path?

Zeinab Badawi: Minister Audrey Tang in Taipei, welcome to HARDtalk.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. Really happy to be here.

Zeinab Badawi: President Xi of China reiterated at the recent Chinese Communist Party Congress that “China wants to strive for the prospect of peaceful unification with Taiwan,” but that he will “never promise to give up the option to use force.”

Zeinab Badawi: Just sum up briefly the mood for us, the reaction to that possibly new threat.

Audrey Tang: Well, that’s a familiar message. We’ve been hearing that for quite some time.

Audrey Tang: Of course, we have to prepare ourselves to face the authoritarian expansionism, but that has been the case for as long as I can remember.

Zeinab Badawi: So people have not been at all worried by this renewed threat?

Audrey Tang: Not especially worried.

Audrey Tang: Of course, we’ve been seeing renewed interest in, for example, countering disinformation, cybersecurity attacks and so on.

Audrey Tang: But the overall mood is quite calm.

Zeinab Badawi: OK, because China has claimed Taiwan as part of its territory since 1949.

Zeinab Badawi: But now, according to intelligence in the United States, President Xi wants to accelerate the program and unify Taiwan by 2027.

Zeinab Badawi: So you’ve got this timeframe.

Zeinab Badawi: We’ve seen increased military activity, spy planes, bombers, missiles being fired over the Taiwan Strait. Surely, you cannot discount the possibility that there could be a military conflict.

Audrey Tang: Well, in Taiwan, we face earthquakes or typhoons all the time. Earthquakes don’t give us a lot of advance notice either.

Audrey Tang: So our role is to be resilient, meaning that we prepare for adversity and recover from it.

Audrey Tang: Our readiness, I think, stands high at any given time.

Zeinab Badawi: You sound quite relaxed about it, if I may say, Minister Tang.

Zeinab Badawi: Because the Foreign Minister of Taiwan, Joseph Wu, says “China’s behavior is provocative and threatening regional peace and stability.”

Zeinab Badawi: I mean, Taiwan is the reddest of red lines for China, isn’t it?

Audrey Tang: Well, we are on the front line, and because I’m the digital minister, I wouldn’t think “in the case of event of attack,” because we literally face cyber attacks every day.

Zeinab Badawi: All right, as you say, quite rightly, you face cyber attacks, millions every day…

Audrey Tang: Millions every day.

Zeinab Badawi: ..from China, I put it to you that Kitsch Yen-Fan from the global China hub at the Atlantic Council says, “We are already at war. This is a constant thing.”

Zeinab Badawi: I mean, is he right? Is Taiwan effectively engaged in a cyber war with China?

Audrey Tang: It’s quite continuous.

Audrey Tang: For example, when the US Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited, we’ve seen one single time, the peak 23 times higher than the previous peak of the distributed denial of service attack, trying to shut down the websites of the Ministry of National Defense, the President’s office and so on.

Audrey Tang: Although they didn’t succeed in revealing any sensitive information or exposing the confidential documents, the height of the attack is quite visible to everyone.

Audrey Tang: So because of that, there is a renewed interest in strengthening our cybersecurity.

Zeinab Badawi: You’ve broken many glass ceilings. You’re a hacker turned minister. You were a child prodigy. You established your own technology company at the age of 15.

Zeinab Badawi: You were involved in the Sunflower student protests in 2014 to try to avoid the fast tracking of a trade bill with China.

Zeinab Badawi: You are the first openly transgender minister anywhere in the world. So, you know, a first there.

Zeinab Badawi: But given that your own department is the Ministry of Digital Affairs, you need to strengthen Taiwan’s digital protection.

Zeinab Badawi: So how capable is your infrastructure of withstanding these cyberattacks from China?

Audrey Tang: I would say that we build resilience in order to counter not just the hard cybersecurity attacks, but also the disinformation, the propaganda, the foreign interference to our elections, and so on. So these two go hand in hand.

Audrey Tang: On the counter disinformation part we rely on, well, journalism, but also our citizens practicing journalism.

Audrey Tang: Fact checking, for example, is a popular pastime [laughs] for Taiwanese students to do their exercise and so on.

Audrey Tang: So once we are armed with so-called antibodies of the mind, we’re less vulnerable to the disinformation attacks.

Audrey Tang: Now, in terms of cybersecurity attacks, it’s been pointed out that the submarine cables is one of the vulnerabilities in Taiwan, because these are the places that connect us to the world.

Audrey Tang: So learning from Ukraine, we’re now investing around, I think, 15 million USD over the next couple years to build more than 700 mobile or fixed satellite receivers for the non-geostationary satellites in orbit, so that we can still keep a line open to talk to our democratic allies around the world, even in the event of the severe disruption to our submarine cables.

Zeinab Badawi: So the idea, part of a digital strategy, is to keep information about Taiwan flowing.

Zeinab Badawi: As part of that ambition, you have proposed a satellite trial program to try to guarantee internet services across Taiwan.

Zeinab Badawi: But given the current tensions with China, these talks are pretty urgent, aren’t they, between private sector companies and the Taiwanese government?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we’re quite happy with our existing collaboration with vendors currently in mid Earth orbit. And we will, of course, expand that to new vendors to the low Earth orbit.

Audrey Tang: But I think taken together, this provides a heterogenous, that is to say composed of various different solutions and vendors, a palette for us to continue the conversation, because if you do not have real time video feed in a time of event of disaster, the appetite for information is still there. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: And so disinformation would take the place of real journalistic reports if we do not provide journalism with high speed bandwidth of the internet.

Zeinab Badawi: One thing that Taiwan is hugely significant for in the global economy is the fact that you provide about 90% of the world’s advanced microchips.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Zeinab Badawi: And these are of course, critical in all sorts of ways, microchips we use in our phones, in cars, in laptops and so on.

Zeinab Badawi: And one Taiwanese company, TSMC, in fact, accounts for half of the global market. How does this affect your relationship with China? Because China is one of your big partners, economically, trading, and yet it’s this foe that we’ve been discussing.

Zeinab Badawi: And there’s talk about a silicon shield, that this kind of supply of microchips can protect you from an attack by China.

Zeinab Badawi: Yet, on the other hand, it could also prove a very attractive, valuable acquisition for China. So, how do you see it?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think the silicon shield, so-called silicon shield, is a symbol of the trust that the entire world places on the “made in Taiwan” chips, because as you mentioned, the chips power everything from the military to science and so on.

Audrey Tang: The trustworthiness of the manufacturing of those chips, the cybersecurity, for example, the E187 cybersecurity standard were built from Taiwan to ensure the trustworthiness of those chips in its computation. That is very important.

Audrey Tang: So we see that as truly an asset, that made in Taiwan, M-I-T, The “T” also stands for trustworthiness. And so I think this idea that things made from Taiwan can power the science and military and whatever other applications around the world — it’s a symbol of trust. And that is the true shield that unites Taiwan, as well as our democratic allies.

Zeinab Badawi: A symbol of trust, but does it protect you from Chinese aggression?

Audrey Tang: I think if the world comes to see Taiwan as an essential partner in providing trustworthy computation, then the entire democratic camp will see us as a very valuable partner and so will come to our defense.

Zeinab Badawi: I mean, another paradox which is quite puzzling about Taiwan is, you are part of the government which came to power in 2016 when President Tsai Ing Wen, who leads the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP, won the elections very decisively.

Zeinab Badawi: What is the position of the Government when it comes to independence? Because polls consistently show that the Taiwanese people don’t want independence, and yet they don’t want unification with China. So how does the government reconcile this?

Audrey Tang: I think all the major parties, including the DPP, the Democratic Progressive Party you mentioned, in the parliament, reject authoritarian expansionism.

Audrey Tang: When we look at Hong Kong, the so-called “one country two systems” has turned into so called “only patriots can rule Hong Kong.” So I think we all reject that.

Audrey Tang: And our way of life, of course, is a free and democratic one. So in the digital realm, we’re happy that, for example, our domain name .TW is quite independent from .UK, .US and .CN, obviously, so I think people care more about this day-to-day state as a full fledged member — a partner to the democratic community — more than anything else.

Zeinab Badawi: But you are part of a government — I appreciate you are nonpartisan and not a member of the DPP — but President Tsai Ing Wen’s comments are quite puzzling.

Zeinab Badawi: For example, in 2020, she told the BBC that, “We don’t have a need to declare independence. We are an independent country already, and call ourselves the Republic of China.” What does she mean by that?

Audrey Tang: Well, the ROC government officially relocated to Taiwan in the 1940s.

Audrey Tang: And ever since then, we say ROC Taiwan, with or without the parenthesis [laughs], to symbolize that when we talk about the ROC now, it means that the people in this free country have elected the President directly since 1996 and so on.

Audrey Tang: And so they have become like synonyms, the ROC and Taiwan.

Zeinab Badawi: You’re talking about when Chiang Kai-shek left China, having been defeated by the Communists in 1949 and fled to Taiwan with 2 million of his followers, and we had the Republic of China there.

Zeinab Badawi: But it’s still not clear, the government or the president not backing formal independence, really, and yet saying we reject unification.

Zeinab Badawi: You use words like “country”, but actually only about a dozen very small states in the Caribbean or Latin America…

Audrey Tang: Or the Vatican City.

Zeinab Badawi: ..and the Vatican recognizes Taiwan as a nation. I mean, you’re losing that argument.

Audrey Tang: But on the digital realm, when we signed the Declaration for the Future of the Internet, which I signed on behalf of Taiwan, we’re one of the 61 partners, full democracies, signing that declaration together to place our investments jointly to build, to shape the internet into something that’s resilient against authoritarianism and to protect human rights.

Audrey Tang: And in the declaration, we’re all referred to as partners or as democracies and so on. So on that front, we’re gaining new ground.

Zeinab Badawi: But can you say you are a country when, as I just said, major countries, the United States, all of the European Union don’t recognize Taiwan as a nation state? You don’t have a seat at the United Nations.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but we do have a top-level Internet domain. So my point here is… [laughs]

Zeinab Badawi: So you exist as a country only in the digital space. Is that what you’re saying?

Audrey Tang: What I’m saying is that nowadays there is more multi-stakeholder or hybrid — multilateral and multi-stakeholder — meaning composed of countries, but also EU or the Vatican City and many other entities that comprise the democratic partnership, which is why in my ministry, the Ministry of Digital Affairs, our department is called the Department of Democracy Network, not International Cooperation.

Zeinab Badawi: Eric Chu, the Leader of the Opposition Kuomintang or KMT Party, criticizes the DPP, the President, for not maintaining a dialogue with China.

Zeinab Badawi: I mean, even the Americans, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, held talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September. They talked for an hour and a half.

Zeinab Badawi: Why is President Tsai here not accepting to talk directly with the Chinese?

Audrey Tang: Well, I think in her national day address, President Tsai Ing-Wen said very clearly that as long as there are equitable terms for dialogue, she’s happy to have a conversation to keep the Taiwan Strait peaceful and so on.

Zeinab Badawi: But I mean, she says she will only talk if Beijing drops that precondition that Taiwan is part of China. [laughs] And so you’ve got a deadlock. They’re not going to do that. President Xi has just reiterated unification must happen, and so you have no dialogue.

Audrey Tang: Maybe a video conference then? [laughs]

Zeinab Badawi: But, I mean, not even that’s taken place. I mean, are you encouraging her to do that?

Audrey Tang: My point here is that if there are ways for the Beijing authorities and Taiwan government to have a more matter of factly conversation, around the day to day conversations, on matters when it concerns the people’s livelihoods and so on, that has been going on for quite a while.

Audrey Tang: What you’re asking is essentially the political question, but from my point of view, because I’m nonpartisan, I think it’s far easier if we focus on the parts, for example, advancing democracy, human rights and so on.

Audrey Tang: We work as the Ministry of Digital Affairs through the Department of Democracy Network, not just with government entities of fellow democracies, but also people who are advocating for democracy and independent journalists and so on, even if they live in authoritarian regimes. And so on these topics, we’re happy to have conversations.

Zeinab Badawi: All right, but it’s not just the political question where there is a lack of clarity. Even Taiwan’s defense strategy is lacking. Taiwan’s former top military official, staff Admiral Lee Hsi-ming, who retired three years ago, says “the Taiwanese army is not prepared and that it must think strategically,” which he says it isn’t doing.

Zeinab Badawi: His criticisms highlight the inertia in the Taiwanese army because it was the armed wing of the KMT, the Chinese Nationalist Party, that ruled under martial law for decades. And so therefore, it’s not reinvented itself sufficiently for the modern era.

Zeinab Badawi: So what do you say to that criticism?

Audrey Tang: I believe you’re mentioning the “asymmetric defense” concept.

Zeinab Badawi: Yes.

Audrey Tang: I think in the cyber security domain, this is obviously the case. We need to create places where we spend as minimal resources as possible in order to counter the far more resources that the adversaries throw at us.

Audrey Tang: So when I talk about, for example, mitigating the denial of service attacks following Nancy Pelosi’s visit this August, we developed a way to tie our defense, the web2 and web3 defenses to the international backbones that powers the NFTs, the cryptocurrencies and so on. So if you take this down, then you also must take down the entire…

Zeinab Badawi: But I’m talking about military hardware, really. That’s what the admiral’s criticisms were.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Zeinab Badawi: I mean, President Tsai has just announced a 40% boost in Taiwan’s defense spending. You face an army, a standing army of about 2 million in total. I think you’ve got something like 170,000.

Zeinab Badawi: You’ve cut your Army personnel by more than half since the 1990s. It’s that kind of defense strategy that the Admiral is referring to. And so that’s all pretty unwise, isn’t it, that kind of approach?

Audrey Tang: We’ve seen recently that under the call of the all-out mobilization, people are having an interest in getting the training they need in order to, well, again, learn from Ukraine to contribute in the time of an invasion.

Audrey Tang: And in the domain of cybersecurity, which I’m more familiar with, we’ve also got people, from students to the people already working to learn not just basic cyber, like, sanitation, good habits, but also ways to, again, learning from the so-called IT army from Ukraine, to work with the international people…

Zeinab Badawi: Sure.

Audrey Tang: …when times come for a kind of all-out defense.

Audrey Tang: So I think this is not just about the Ministry of National Defense, but also about equipping our citizens.

Zeinab Badawi: So, for example, the Taiwanese tycoon Robert Tsao has pledged 33 million USD to help train civilian fighters, as you’re referring to there.

Zeinab Badawi: But he’s doing the job of government there, isn’t he? He’s trying to fill in the holes to make up for the lack of a proper defense strategy that the government should be addressing.

Audrey Tang: I think that these two work in tandem. I have a heart condition that prevents me from actually enrolling in the compulsory two-year military service at the time. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to know about our defense strategy and get training in cybersecurity and other matters when time comes.

Audrey Tang: So I think the connection between people who are willing to contribute and national defense, that is the bridge that we’re building.

Zeinab Badawi: All right. When it comes to defense, it seems like Taiwan is going to be relying a great deal on the United States. The US Senate has passed a bill to provide $6.5 billion to fund weapons and other military support for Taiwan. A strong bipartisan strategy for the Americans there.

Zeinab Badawi: And President Biden, it seems, has been abandoning American policy, which has been called strategic ambiguity for many years, not spelling out what would happen, from America’s point of view, if China did invade Taiwan.

Zeinab Badawi: But now he’s saying that the US would get involved militarily if China invaded Taiwan. He says, “Yes, that’s the commitment we made.” And when pressed in an interview on American TV, whether that meant that American men and women would defend Taiwan, he answered, “Yes.”

Zeinab Badawi: So what’s your interpretation now of US policy towards Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: It is obviously to deter expansionism by authoritarian regimes by making it clear, as I mentioned, that the cost will be insurmountable if they even consider annexation…

Zeinab Badawi: Do you see a shift in policy? Do you see an abandonment of that strategic ambiguity in favor of a more robust approach?

Audrey Tang: …it’s been called “strategic clarity,” right? Spelling it out, as you just mentioned.

Zeinab Badawi: Yeah. So you do. But do you think that’s reassuring for the Taiwanese? Or arguably, it could put you right in the middle of the growing tensions between China and the United States. You could end up becoming a pawn in this superpower rivalry.

Audrey Tang: A couple of things.

Audrey Tang: I think, first of all, clarity doesn’t mean escalation. So it’s not like we’re escalating the tension here. That’s the first thing.

Audrey Tang: And the second thing is that, as I mentioned, there’s a lot of willingness from not just the US but also European counterparts and many other democratic allies.

Audrey Tang: All the 60 signatories of the Declaration for the Future of the Internet are committed to keep it free and open.

Zeinab Badawi: Sticking with the tensions, you’re not escalating the tensions, but the tensions between China and the United States are escalating. Joe Biden has got the export controls now on Chinese technology and so on. And my point is, how is Taiwan viewing this?

Zeinab Badawi: Because I’ll give you a quote, Michael Swain from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft says Biden’s statements make Taiwan less secure because they increase the chance of the US being pulled into a war. Makes you less secure. Is it right?

Audrey Tang: The point I’m making is that, for example, the UK also realized that previously considered “inexpensive” 5G communication equipments from authoritarian regimes are actually expensive, if you think about the risk it poses to national security.

Audrey Tang: So it’s not like only the US does that assessment. Everybody else is doing the same assessment and concludes that Taiwan is the more trustworthy partner when it comes to powering the secure telecommunication or any scientific, military computation needs.

Zeinab Badawi: It’s the better democratic partner and they’re willing to commit…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, exactly.

Zeinab Badawi: ..military support, and that’s something that’s good in your opinion.

Audrey Tang: Right. So this is not a US-PRC thing. This is a free democratic alliance thing.

Zeinab Badawi: All right. Finally, as Minister of Digital Affairs, Audrey Tang, you’re trying to transform Taiwan into a digital democracy. Around 87% of people under the age of 12 are connected. And you want to increase citizen participation online.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Zeinab Badawi: How do you think you’re going to be able to develop this? I mean, could you go the way of China that uses surveillance to increase its authoritarianism?

Zeinab Badawi: America, where we’ve seen the internet being used in a way that polarizes society more. How are you going to avoid falling into either trap?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. So our point is that democracy can deliver — if it becomes more democratic, so that everybody can participate.

Audrey Tang: You mentioned Chiang Kai-shek’s relocation [laughs] of the ROC government to Taiwan in the ‘40s.

Audrey Tang: At the time, there’s very — like, people with very different life experiences suddenly having to coexist together.

Audrey Tang: My own grandma is a local Taiwanese who studied Japanese and my grandpa comes from Szechuan. So in my family, I understand the need to collaborate across diversity.

Audrey Tang: Today, Taiwan is home to, like, 20 national languages and many different ethnic people. So the point I’m making is that democracy must build collaboration across diversity, and that’s the way we’re employing digital technologies to do.

Zeinab Badawi: Audrey Tang, Minister of Digital Affairs here in Taiwan, thank you very much indeed for coming on HARDtalk.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. Live long and prosper.