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Webinar: in Conversation with Audrey Tang Transcript Webinar: In Conversation with Audrey Tang Audrey Tang Digital Minister, Taiwan Marjorie Buchser Executive Director, Digital Society Initiative, Chatham House Hans Kundnani Senior Research Fellow, Europe Programme, Chatham House Chair: Dr Robin Niblett CMG Director and Chief Executive, Chatham House Event date: 17 June 2020 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event, every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. © The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2020. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chair: Jim O’Neill Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Webinar: In Conversation with Audrey Tang Dr Robin Niblett CMG So, ladies and gentlemen, members of Chatham House, guests, friends, and all of those joining us today, I’m Robin Niblett, the Director of Chatham House, and I’m absolutely thrilled to have with us today, as part of our Digital Society Initiative, an initiative we set up at Chatham House about a year ago as part of our second century, which, for those of you who know Chatham House, will know is starting in 21. 2020 is 100 years of Chatham House, since we were first founded, and our Digital Society Initiative is a bit about how we think of our engagement for the future, what are the opportunities, in many cases, that technology can help deliver to build a better world in the future, and not just the risks and negatives. People spend a lot of time talking about the negatives of technology. We want to be as alive at Chatham House to the opportunities for technology to drive progress, especially in public policy, and in democracy. And, for that reason, I am absolutely thrilled that we have with us today Audrey Tang. Audrey Tang, welcome to this interview, which we’re recording, but, Audrey, great to have you with us. Audrey Tang Hi, very happy to be here and have a good local time everyone. Dr Robin Niblett CMG Yeah, well, exactly. Well, as this is a recorded interview, I’m trying to think, it’s quite late in the evening in your time, I suspect. It’s still, in our context, on the 17th of June, and relatively early in the morning, but Audrey is joining us today for a conversation with two of my colleagues, and Marjorie Buchser, who is the Head of our Digital Society Initiative and Executive Director, and Hans Kundnani, Senior Fellow in our Europe Programme. But the reason we thought it’d be especially good to have Hans with us is he is leading our commission on democracy and technology, in particular thinking about the modernisation of democracy in Europe, and I’m looking forward to, later on in our conversation with Audrey, looking at parallels of lessons that maybe we can learn in Europe from the experience of Taiwan, or certainly to compare experiences between the two. Audrey, I’m just going to – I mean, I think your name is now well-known. It was pretty well-known prior to COVID-19, but with Taiwan having really come into the public presence because of its very successful response to the COVID-19 outbreak, people have been trying to work out how did that happen? And the use of digital technology, the fact that Taiwanese citizens appeared to be so comfortable with the, kind of, digital-led responses, whereas we, in Europe, you know, are trying to hold digital innovation back in many cases ‘cause we’re so suspicious of it. Clearly, there was an advantage to the fact that you became Digital Minister for Taiwan back in October of 2016, this wasn’t some recent innovation, this has got four years, pretty much, history through out. Audrey Tang That’s right, that’s right. Dr Robin Niblett CMG And I know you’re somebody who cuts your teeth not at all in politics, you were somebody who – a software programme from age 12/14, somewhere around there, if I’m describing it right. 3 Webinar: In Conversation with Audrey Tang Audrey Tang Hmmm hmm, yeah, well… Dr Robin Niblett CMG And followed lots of start-ups. Audrey Tang Yes, well, internet governance is also politics, but it’s not representative politics, that’s right. Yeah. Dr Robin Niblett CMG Well, that’s a very important point, and, actually, Hans is somebody who always reminds me that when you talk about democracy, accountable and representative democracies are not always the same things. You’ve got to be able to break them apart. So, can you just tell me, before we talk about COVID and so on, and your response, why did Taiwan create a Digital Minister? What was the point? What was the driver? What did you bring to the Cabinet, as a, sort of, technocratic invitee into it? What did you bring? What did the government want? Audrey Tang Yeah, so, a few things, right? You said democracy and technology as if they were two things, but in Taiwan, democracy is just a set of technologies. We literally have the first Presidential election back in 1996, when the world web is already in place, so it’s very natural for us to see that democracy is a evolving technology, social technology, of course, and applied political science at that, and we see it as improving as more people participate. So, as Digital Minister, I think that digital technology remain one of the best ways to improve participation, which is at the core of democracy, as long as the focus is on finding common ground and creating what I call a pro-social media and not the anti-social media, and creating a rough consensus and running code in this sense, a code – running code of law. And so I bring with myself my experiences in multi-stakeholderism, in internet governance, in open source and free software community, to reimagine how democracy could be done, aside from traditional way of, like, uploading five bits per person every four years, which is called voting, and maybe we can increase the bit rate of democracy. Dr Robin Niblett CMG That’s, I tell you, fascinating, ‘cause you’ve laid out there all sorts of ideas that I really look forward to unpacking. I read – and not my own thing, somebody quoted to me the other day that Alexis Tocqueville talked about “Democracy being a set of participations and associations,” so it’s amazing… Audrey Tang Exactly. 4 Webinar: In Conversation with Audrey Tang Dr Robin Niblett CMG …that you’re channelling today, in the 20th Century, what he was channelling back in the 18th, I hope I got that right, ‘cause that’s recorded, Alexis Tocqueville. Hans is nodding, so I was correct on that one. But can I just pick you up on one point, ‘cause you used a very important word there, ‘consensus’. Here we are in Europe, ‘cause, I mean, I’m sitting in London, and we look over at the United States, we look at Europe, people increasingly associate democracy with a lack of consensus. Democracy about being competition between different viewpoints, fighting it out, winning an election, one side gets to try to implement its programme for four years, and then somebody else gets a turn for three or five years, or whatever. But you seem to be talking about democracy as a much more fluid, evolutionary process, and you said about building consensus. Could you just explain that process? Audrey Tang But there was a objective before that, though. I said building rough consensus, and rough consensus is not the same as, like, a fine consensus that you can sign your name on, that you’re perfectly happy with it, because we know, on the internet, nobody has the time to do that. So, people with the most time end up getting their voice, if you are seeking fine consensus, but rough consensus, as defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force, is just somebody we can all live with. It’s a much softer sense of consensus, and, in fact, in Mandarin, we say gònshi, which literally translate as common understanding. So, it’s just a common understanding that we can all, more or less, live with, and that’s the kind of consensus we’re seeking. Dr Robin Niblett CMG So, common understanding will rely critically, I’d imagine, on transparency, access to information that is shared by the entire citizenry. Could you just say a little bit about how connected Taiwanese citizens are, their capacity to engage with the type of democratic, rough consensus building you just described? You know, is that one of the prerequisites for a successful digital democracy, that access, that in – that sense of ownership of information, but access to…. Audrey Tang Definitely, definitely. In Taiwan, we have broadband as a human right, so no matter where you are in Taiwan, even at a peak of Taiwan, almost 4,000 metres, the [inaudible – 07:42], the Yushan mountain, you are guaranteed to have 10mb per second, enough for high bandwidth videoconferencing for just €15 per month, unlimited 4G or cable or fibre, one way or another.
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