To be honest, I was a bit astonished that your press secretary asked for the subjects I would be talking. [laughs]

Yeah, it’s OK. I know how to handle it. [laughs] I think you as well. I’ll just start it now. OK, it goes.

I understand your job description is minister of digital affairs in Taiwan. Your job is to make the democratically elected government as transparent as possible…

…for the benefit of the people.

To the people. This seems to be exactly the opposite of what is happening in China.

Yes.

The regime has the opposite aim of using digitalization for the benefit of the regime for making the people as transparent as possible. I wonder, is Taiwan is under threat from China – from mainland China – politically…also, military threats? Do you see limits of transparency in Taiwan?

I mean, your president yesterday or the day before said every day, China is somehow meddling in Taiwan. Are there limits to transparency in Taiwan?

You don’t see the danger of China misusing your transparency somewhat?

Right next door to Taiwan, in Hong Kong, there’s a struggle about trust at the moment. We see a leaderless mass movement organized mostly over the Internet for more than five months now. How does this struggle in Hong Kong affect Taiwan?

In Hong Kong, the protests are also about the principle of one country, two systems, which originally was designed for attracting Taiwan. Has this principle failed now?

Do you think that the protests in Hong Kong are helping your current president – I mean Tsai Ing-wen – and your government at the moment getting reelected? Is it, let’s say, yeah, helping you getting reelected, as it shows the true face of China?

You are quoted as having said that, “It is urgent to think democratically…” Sorry. Your quote was, “It is urgent to think democracy digitally new.” What do you mean by that? Can you give us an example?

To be honest, I found the quote only in German, so I re-translated it, and maybe…

Yeah, it is [German] .

Yes, thank you.

How do you ensure that this system is not manipulated?

That means, if I understand correctly, you give a lot of power to the telecom companies.

Yes, so they are becoming more powerful. I think five is, they are quite powerful already, so they get more power now?

KYC?

I understand digitalization as a tool, but not as a substance, of democracy.

How you protect against digitalization being mistaken as substance of democracy?

Can you give us a practical example?

As I said before, digitalization is a tool, and it’s also not only a tool for democratization, but also, for the opposite, for…

…authoritarian, yes. Especially, we mentioned the case of PRC already. It can be threatening personal privacy and lead toward a surveillance state. How you exclude these dangers in your plan?

Like we mentioned already, PRC is leading in, let’s say, artificial energy as a tool for surveillance and for the control of the population. Do you see Western countries more and more following the Chinese example?

In Berlin, we are experimenting with it. We have one train station which has artificial face recognition.

GDPR stands for?

Oh, yeah.

Here in Germany for example, it’s like the big corporations, they dictate the terms, so you, an individual, cannot say, “Oh, I would like to work with you, but this condition or that condition, I don’t like.”

It’s the companies, they dictate the terms, and if you don’t like the term, you cannot work with that company and there’s no other company taking you because the terms are more or less all the same.

That would be my other question, that companies like Google or Facebook, that they are so dominating. They have such a strong monopoly. On the other hand, they are hardly paying any taxes. They are more and more seen as a danger to democracy and privacy rights.

As a minister, you don’t see part of your job as limiting the power of, let’s say, Facebook, or YouTube, or Google, or whatever?

Yeah, but that’s on the individual level, but on the political level, these companies, usually, they are known as more powerful than, let’s say, medium sized countries. They have the potential of being helpful in democratization, but they also have a potential in limiting democratization.

What are you doing about it?

They’re there for making money, not for governing, and they are not elected.

Yeah.

If I understand it correctly, that there is, for example, no law against hate speech, so it’s up to the company and up to the constituency to call hate speech a hate speech. It’s not that Facebook has to follow certain rules set by you, but it’s up to Facebook to react?

It’s a kind of NGO?

That means Facebook makes a profit, and the society has to check the facts.

Do I understand correctly, so far, you managed to make the government more transparent, like let’s say, the social media companies? Your power is very limited to make them more transparent.

Good. I’m not sure how it’s in Taiwan, but at least in Germany, I would say that many elderly people, they have problems with digitalization. They are not connected with the Web. With your strength in digitalization, your strength in the divide in society.

For example, my mother, she is not able to use the Internet. What are you doing against this division of society, of exclusion of elderly people? Some type of discrimination as well, if you strongly focus so much on digitalization. What are you doing against this danger of discrimination against elderly people?

Yeah. Your connectedness is much better [laughs] not in Germany.

Before, we mentioned the creation of addiction already. Basically, I would think that people are connected to the Web already for many, many hours, and I think it would be sometime better if they would not be with the Web so much.

Yeah, with the screen. It would be better if people would directly communicate with each other, speaking with each other. [laughs] For example, if my daughter is visiting me, we see maybe for three hours, and two hours, 45 minutes, she is…

At the screen, and maybe 10 minutes, she is talking with me, maximum, so I would prefer, let’s say…

Yes. What are you doing against that?

The final part will be more about you as a person, and also as a minister, is your style. You’re quoted as having said, as a minister, you’re not giving orders and you don’t take orders.

Because of this, someone described you more as a kind of chat room moderator than a typical minister. How do you see your role and your style of work?