 So, I'm grateful that you accepted our invitation and we're happy to have you here in our interview today. My name is Sun. I'm a reporter from Supreme Master Television. And we do have a good gardener's playground, which features the individuals who are in the garden doing some great works in their country, to the people, to the environment, and to the animals that are far. So, we found out that, and also we have done some background research about you, that you're doing wonderful work. As a youngest parliament member in Taiwan. And we'd like to hear more about you. Cabinet member. Cabinet member. There's a very young coast player in the parliament. She's the youngest member. It's only you. I see. So, but it's a... Yeah, I'm the youngest cabinet member, that's right. Oh, okay. All right. Good to know. So, we would like to hear more about your response to COVID and plus your initiative on social innovation. And overall, your IT background, how you're looking at the future of this digital democracy tools. Glad to share. Yes. So, let us get started with the first question. Because we watched all your interviews of the news agency, BBC and TED and CNN. You have described very non-slate down your work and your role as a digital minister from this parliament. And Taiwan is like this funnily, safest country during this pandemic. So, it's an amazing thing. And so, could you briefly tell us your main role for this college response in Taiwan? Sure. So, my role is the digital minister in charge of social innovation. And by social innovation, we mean people, not public servants like ordinary citizens who think of a better way to further a social good. They can propose this idea and I'm the one who amplify their idea. For example, there was a young person named Hao Wei Wu in Tainan City who at the end of January invented a way for people to report which stores still have masks and which store has run out of masks. So, people do not have to shop around for like five different stores before they can find some medical masks. It's a really good project except I realize on ordinary consumers to report whether there's still masks and storage. And so, I saw the idea. I bring it to the premier saying that we need to support this young person and provide the real-time availability in all pharmacies in real-time. That is to say every 30 seconds. So, instead of relying on people to report, the pharmacists who are very professional and trusted by the community, they do not have to say like every day we have run out of masks or not, they can just simply post online. And then everybody looking at the map, even people queuing in the line can actually check that nowadays if you take your national health insurance card which covers more than 99.99% of citizens and also residents to a pharmacy, then you can get nine medical masks per two weeks or 10 if you are a child. And the person queuing after you can just refresh the map and see the number actually decreased by nine or 10 just in a couple of minutes. And so, this builds trust like every time everybody look at the map, they can see that the system is working. If rather after I purchased the people queuing after me see rather the number increases, they will call it a toll-free number line when I do it right there because there would be something wrong. So, instead of asking people to trust the government's numbers, the government trusts the citizens with open data and to make sure that everybody can earn the trust by this repeated participatory accountability. And so, they open data in how this digital democracy tool combines the data bringing up all the successful response. Yeah. So, for example, the mask availability map is built upon the previous maps, for example, around air quality. So, in Taiwan, especially in the middle areas of Taiwan, there's many people who care a lot about PM2.5 and other air quality indicators. Instead of waiting for the Environmental Protection Agency, they set up their own air boxes. That is to say less than 100 US dollars each, they can put it into their balcony, into their schools and so on, and contribute a real-time measurement of air quality closest to where people are instead of the official stations, which may be very precise, but are quite far from where people are. And so, after gathering tens of thousands of those people participating in the environmental measurement, they come to be even more trusted and more legitimate than the government. And then they started negotiating with the government. And because in Taiwan, where it plays according to the human rights organizations, Civicus Monitor were the one in Asia country that is completely open in the sense that people have the absolute freedom of speech, of assembly, of the press, and so on, were the most open-wind of Asia. So, the environmental ministry cannot beat the citizen scientists. We must join them. And so, we learned about their ideas of air boxes and negotiated with them so that we also put their design to the, for example, industrial parks where the citizen scientists cannot get access to, but turns out the government owns the lamp, so we can put those small air boxes on the lamps and therefore complete the picture that society started. So, the social sector in Taiwan, not-for-profit organizations, social entrepreneurs co-ops in Taiwan, always had a better idea, a good way of getting people agreeing on the social norm and its government's role. It's called a reverse procurement to implement the ideas started by the social sector. And together, we can tell the businesses that if they are doing the emissions, pollution, and so on, there's a lot of people watching. So, the companies will be incentivized then to use a more circular way that is less harmful to the environment. In the interview with Ted, you were mentioning about your job description, and your philosophy that helped. Everything has cracks in it and where the light gets in. And something sounded really much more beyond that you were thinking of, the things in it broadly. Could you explain this a little bit about that? Sure. So, my job description goes like this. When we see the Internet of Things, let's make it the Internet of Beings. When we see virtual reality, let's make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make it collaborative learning. And when we see user experience, let's make it about human experience. And whenever we hear the singularity is near, let's always remember that plurality is here. So, this is a simple idea that instead of technology as something like a progress, we have to chase the society, we need to chase technology. Instead, technology is just our assistant. The technology should adapt to the society's needs and norms instead of the society adapting to the technology. It's as simple as that. That's wonderful. How did you come up with this job description? How is it defined in all of Taiwan in practice? I was in New Zealand when I wrote this. And I was listening to the Maori chant and dance and feel the mana, the spirit of the land. And because in the Maori culture, they say that the culture travels all the way from Taiwan, so they have a connection with the Taiwanese indigenous cultures as well. So, I saw back of the time that I spent in the Ulai mountain with the Taiyali people and the indigenous spirit that talks about sustainability, not in the term sustainability, which is a recent term, but by the act of acting sustainably with the nature. That is to say, when they make a decision as a community, as a culture, they do not chase something just for this generation. They think about the environment, how it's going to be like seven generations down the line. And so, because if you take a very long view, then technology are there to make the world a better place for the upcoming generations. But if you take a short view, then you may improve, for example, vanity for this generation, but at the cost of the future generations. So, I think the long view is what I got from the Maori chants. And so, practically speaking, we're requiring now the largest company, public listed companies, they have to file the sustainability reports. That is to say, they work because their shareholders are many. Their shareholder value is in a sense the value of the public. And so, they have to make it accountable to the public that while pursuing the bottom line of profit, they would not hurt the bottom lines of people and of planet. So, profit people and planet are the triple bottom lines that they need to further. And we have a social innovation platform that we also invite companies and co-ops and universities and credit unions and everything that are not yet publicly listed. Nevertheless, this close every year, how they're making progress toward the people and the planet bottom lines because Taiwan is mostly small and medium enterprises to imbue this kind of long view thinking for the small and medium enterprises as well as the social entrepreneurs instead of just for the public listed companies. This is like an incubator program to make sure that everybody thinks responsibly not just the public listed ones. So, how do you encourage this all this ethical and moral actions like especially in the social platform that you initiated? So, there's two main ways. One is called buying power. If one discloses one's planet and people bottom lines, then we list it on the catalog. And if, for example, there was a coffee shop called a Luisa and instead of working with its previous milk vendor, it started to work with pure milk or Sien Lu Fang, which is one such social enterprise that started with crowdfunding and is continuing to make accountability by the animal doctors and so on on the animal ethics as well as the planetary commitments that they make. And so by integrating the supply chain of a Luisa coffee to prefer pure milk, not only Luisa coffee managed to solve a PR disaster, they actually built brand recognition because people see that its milk vendors are making these contributions to the planet and to the society. And so this kind of collaboration, I would just go out and give the buying power award to this kind of partnership. This is the first kind of reward. And the second kind of reward is that we make sure that if people declare publicly their planetary and society commitments, we find them unlikely partners. For example, Deng Kai-Fu, which is a large supermarket through our award of the Asia Pacific Social Innovation Partnership Award, we highlight their partnership with the Animal Welfare Society in Taiwan, the Dong Wuzhe in Zhehui. And so for the free range eggs and so on, which used to be something like a niche topic that not many people in Taiwan care about free range chickens, but they managed to immerse oneself into a caged chicken situation and show animal cruelty or at least industrial farming. But in a Gagafu setting. And that is a shock to many people who went to the exhibition and who went to the booth. And in that way, they were able to then spread the idea of a more ethical way of getting eggs from chickens and so on. And so I think this is a very good partnership. And after the Reservoir Award, now Gagafu is partnering with a lot more social advocacy groups, not only on the regulations side, but also on the people's consumer awareness side. So how do you see this innovation platform will go on in practice and how it will benefit Taiwan? Yeah, the platform as of this year went to the presidential level because the platform is now also the platform for the presidential hackathon. And the presidential hackathon is an idea that we get those social innovations and every year the president chooses five to give them a trophy. The trophy is a shape of Taiwan with a micro projector underneath. If you turn it on, it shows the project leaders getting this trophy from the president. And the president promising whatever you try in the past three months, we're committed to make it a national priority for the next 12 months. So it's the presidential power as a hackathon award. So one of the winners for this year's social innovation hackathon is the Circuit Plus, which in Mandarin is called Fengcha. Fengcha or tea serving is a very venerated tradition in Taiwan where the shops would put a very large pot of tea outside of their door for people who are thirsty to refill their cups. It's like a self-serving water station. It's been going on for, I think, 100 years or so or more. And so the app that the people working on the presidential hackathon team developed is a Fengcha app where it shows water refill stations near you. And not only is the quality of the water checked, it has a like Pokemon Go, a progress bar that shows how many other people are doing this water refill alone with you, whether you can unlock some mission and visit some special locally, culturally significant shops and so on. And you can collect coins that can be redeemed into the local favorite black tea or green tea or whatever, like specialty drinks and so on. So this is a game based on not using plastic bottles, but rather using refill as a habit. Because we know that people who refill is a habit. And for people who buy fresh bottles, that's also a habit. And habits are very difficult to change. So making a funny game where people would not think that, oh, I'm getting, you know, water refills, but rather I'm participating in the revitalization of the tea serving culture. And that is an angle that can get people to really change the behavior and save plastic bottles and save the planet. And so that was one of the winners of the presidential activism. That's something that sounds really innovative. So based on this, all this work that you were initiating and also working on, could you also explain about the transparency of the government? How this government, how this government in Taiwan is encouraging or inspiring all these beautiful works to take place in the society's own? Sure. So as a digital minister, all the meeting that I chair and all the interviews that I give is published on the internet for everyone to see, either as a transcript or in this case, a video. While you're recording this, we're also recording it. We'll be publishing it unedited on our YouTube channel. And the reason why is that in Mandarin, Digital Minister or Shu Wei Zheng Wei also means a plurality of ministers. Shu Wei is in many, right? And so my idea is that everybody can see through my eyes, like a virtual reality, how a ministry or position work like. And instead of just sharing the policies we make, we share how we're making the policies, the things that we have considered. And because of this, people were able then, for example, when we're working on the e-sport regulations. It used to be that the Ministry of Culture doesn't think e-sport is a culture because it doesn't have hundreds of years of tradition. And the agency of sport in the Ministry of Education didn't consider it sport because you move maybe only your hands, but not your body. And the Ministry of Economy doesn't think this is an economical trade because this is more like performing arts. So maybe it should be the Ministry of Culture. So all the three ministries have very different takes on e-sport. And e-sport kind of fall into this, you know, Bermuda Triangle where there is no competent authority that can work on the rights of the e-sport athletes. And so I just shared the three ministries' positions publicly as a transcript four years ago when I first became the Minister. And there's many people who are very wise on the Internet who look at those transcripts and tells us, for example, that Go or Wei Qi, which is a board game like chess, is now, according to them, an e-sport because most of the Go games like Bridge are now played online. And because the Ministry of Culture have existing regulations about, for example, alternate military service and so on, for the Go players. If we reclassify Go as an e-sport, then all the other e-sports can just match what the Go players make and so on. And so by sharing our uncertainty, by sharing our doubt, by having no problem about face or means, like we can honestly say, we don't know. Please help us figure it out. That's the crack in everything. And that's how the light gets in. That's how the social sector contributed. They're wonderful creative ideas. And finally, we have e-sports recognized as an intellectual sport. I was just wondering, you have this such a broad vision towards all these beautiful things could take place. On the other hand, all this some conventional way of doing things of the government or the citizens that were not able to contribute the idea. And how do you approach all this idea to the public in making it happen in practice? It was humor. We have a saying called humor over rumor. Because whenever there's a rumor about something, conspiracy theory about something, it means that people care. People put their attention on something. There was one time during the pandemic days where there's a rumor that says, we're going to run out of instant noodles soon. The instant noodles are going to be hard to find. So people just rush out and purchase instant noodles. And that means that people are worried about the food safety. But instead of, you know, sharing very blunt numbers, the premier just shared a very simple picture that says, Huo Hen Duo Jin Liang. There's a lot of instant noodles, buy as much as you want. And then add to it, but to take care of your health, buy some fresh vegetables too. And then the mirrors of all the agricultural counties and cities in Taiwan just started sharing those very funny memes about their favorite agricultural products and how to balance, have a good diet and so on. So it became, say, like a festival online around celebrating the agricultural capability of Taiwan. And so once people laugh about something, they will not feel outraged about the thing. And so they could be calm and actually look at the food safety picture and found that Taiwan is actually very safe in terms of food safety and also learn something about a balanced diet. And so we try to make this educational but also always share in a humorous way so that the humor would make other people more likely to share it. And by humor, we don't mean that we make fun of other people. We make fun of ourselves. And that is the idea of humor over rumor. I see. I see. You were explaining about this in one of the interviews. So it's a good team to hear. So we are also... You were mentioning about how to... There was an interview with Thompson Reuters where you mentioned how to blend all this values of environment and social and economic to benefit the society as a whole without needing to... Make trade-offs. Yeah, the lobbying efforts. So is there any possibility that such idea could take place in real life? Yeah. In my experience, if I tell the lobbyist that we're going to publish the transcript or the video afterward, the lobbyists start arguing only using public-benefit arguments. But if this is behind closed door, if this is not transparent, then, of course, they may propose something that may be good for them and may be good for me or may be good for the government but bad for some other people. And so in order to make a Pareto improvement, that is the improvement based on the idea that nobody has to suffer because of a change in the society, like a win-win-win-win or at least not lose a situation that could be discovered, it's vastly important that we make sure that our values are aligned. And how do we... to give an account of whether our values are aligned is through radical transparency, not just transparent in the results but also transparent in the process. If every lobbyist are willing to make publicly visible arguments, then it's like completing a puzzle together. We can all add to the picture without taking away each other's pictures. And that is what we mean by a multi-stakeholder form. The Internet itself is organized this way. That's great. So, like, we are mostly covering all the content that we were looking for. And would you like to hear more about the open-source platform and how this is also... Well, this is... Anyway, everybody is getting to know this is quite instrumental in coming up with something more at once. Definitely. And what about your opinions on this? How do you see this future of AI and all this technological advancement could benefit the environment and the society and the animals including all the necessary aspects? Yeah. To me, AI is assistive intelligence, meaning that just like a human assistant, we would ask for their value to align with ours. And if they make some decisions or actions that seems questionable, we will require them to give a full account. So, value-alignment accountability are the most important things around AI. And open-source, open-data are just a way to make sure that this accountability is easier to achieve because if your assistant speaks a different language from you or if they don't share their thoughts, they may be very beautiful, very responsible, but it's not accountable. And you do not know whether they make such a decision in a way because they agree with your agreement, your values, or whether it's just their own values and it may change drastically when the next conflict or tension comes. And so, again, not just understanding the what of the AI but the why of AI. Why would AI make such a decision? This is very important. And so, open-source, open-data, open-ABI and so on are just ways they're saying like if you buy a car, you're free to take the front lid up and inspect each component in that engine. If they seal off the front lid, that means that you cannot understand why the car works. And if people do not have access to such a knowledge, they would not be able to then to reason about the mechanics or to improve upon the car. But scientific progress is based on the open-access and publishing model. So if people can only be consumers and never be producers of data, of media and so on, then we would just have an elite class that make all the decisions and other people that just follow the decisions and that stops to be a democracy. And so, to really get the democratic attitude and society on the digital age, we need to build the same accountability that we as ministers, we need to be accountable. When journalists ask me questions, I need to answer honestly and so on. And so, and I'm a human minister, but if there are going to be AI systems in the ministry or position in the future, then the same access by the journalists to the AI need to be ensured and openness is one such a way. So then how do you see all this sound, your way of thinking of this assistant intelligent tools could help the government while it's been helping? Maybe how do you see not only Taiwan to the other countries, this your approach would be applicable? Yeah, sure. So it's useful on three different areas. One is simply about saving time. There's a lot of public sector work that are routine, that are paper-based and for a paper-based copy to make 10 copies, it's 10 times more time and resource compared to make one copies. But in the digital, make 10 copies, make 10,000 copies. It's the same time, the same resource. And so on the digital world, making copies is essentially at no marginal cost. So if we can digitize more of the government records and so on, when the person says, oh, I want to access all the government knows about in one place, we make such a copy and it comes at no cost. But if this person goes to the various different offices and asks for paper copies, it's very time consuming for this person. And so the MyData portal in Taiwan shows this idea of just with one button, you can download everything a certain agency has on you and then you can exercise your rights of updating it or asking for a deletion or asking to make a new entries and things like that. And so this one click access of all the personal data, every time saving, not only for citizens, but also for public servants because we do not want to spend our days making photocopies. If this could be automated, the more the better. So that's the one. And aside from digitization, sorry, let's do this again. So aside from the digitization, we also make optimization. For example, a lot of people in the Taiwan Water Company are listening to the water pipes for possible leaks because in Taiwan, water resource is an important thing. But on the G-Lon region, for example, it takes on average two months before a water leak to happen and it to be discovered by the rotating people who listen to the pipe with a stethoscope-like device. And so using assistive intelligence, they build a chatbot as part of Presidential Hackathon a couple of years ago so that the repair people can wake up and look at a chatbot and a chatbot and understand that these are the three likely leaking places by analyzing the water pressure, water flow and things like that with 70% confidence. So if they travel to only those three places with 70% confidence, chances are that they will spend most of their day instead of routinely checking the pipes that are not leaking. They will be spending time creatively thinking about how to plug those leaks. And so this is more job satisfaction and it saves water. And it also shares for example with the New Zealand Wellington Water Company, that team eventually went to Wellington because the climate change they did not have a water shortage problem but increasingly they're now facing this problem. So instead of just buying a certain solution they co-created this diagnostics tool that can optimize people's time with the Taiwan Government. And so the cross-sectoral and international collaboration could be based on this optimization of our environmental resources. So that's optimization. And finally it could also lead to new ways to think about public sector service. For example to file a tax in Taiwan used to be you have to go to the tax office or you have to download this kind of ugly car to use Windows software and you have to get a Windows software. And nowadays you can go to the convenience store to insert your energy card. And if your income tax is less than 20k Taiwan dollars that year you can just print that QR code and hand it to the staff at the convenience store and pay for it and that's it. And so it's easy to pay your income taxes now in more than 12,000 different convenience store pots. And they essentially become extensions of the tax agency. And that's the kind of innovation that could only happen if we have all the card readers figured out we have the connection to the national health insurance agency to figure out and so on. So it builds upon the digitization optimization way. So it does not only save time to improve the quality but it also makes people trust each other more because the convenience store people can show the elderly or people who are not that used to digital technologies how to operate the kiosk elderly people once they learn about it they can teach other elderly people and so people's trust in each other just like the mask availability map increases every time someone teaches someone else how to use such innovations. That sounds very helpful. So could you also tell us more because we know that you're in their identity. Sure. It's what happened. We are trying to link the feeling inside and how it could be also connected with the environmental destruction speciesism stuff and the animal farming so we are trying to link with this crack in it maybe somehow and how do you explain all this interlinked concept of understanding Yeah, I think the idea of intersectionality which is the idea that each of us have some parts of us that are in the kind of superior privileged position but some of part of us are in the minority or less privileged position for example when I was really young and I first learned writing I'm left handed so I write with my left hand and my dad and my grandma my dad's mother are all left handed but when they were children the society taught them to have to learn to write with their right hand because according to my grandma all the telephone booths are on the right hand like the society was designed to be more friendly to people who prefer their right hand and less friendly for people with their left hand to change and so they also taught me to learn to write with my right hand but I tried for a year and then I discovered keyboard so I can type with both my hands and after that of course telephones eventually gets redesigned nowadays the telephone is just a glass tablet it doesn't care whether they're in your left hand or your right hand and so handedness becomes less of a thing divides people apart and people don't pay much attention to left or right handness anymore thanks to the universal design or like when I was a child in the city of Taipei we do not see many people with wheelchairs but when I go to Germany when I was 11 years old in 1992 there's quite a few people with wheelchairs in the streets and I am like so is the Taiwanese people more healthy? so it's a bet we don't use wheelchairs of course it's not it's because the type of city at the time was not friendly to people in wheelchairs it's very difficult for them to navigate and so they just stay home and so just making sure that people see the people of different varying abilities are fully participating citizens it's very eye-opening and nowadays we have like quite a few parents in Taiwan are making sure that the playgrounds for children are designed with the children for the children by the children and children of very different capabilities including wheelchairs and so on need to enjoy the playground equally in a way that is fully inclusive so this idea of inclusion I think is the main thing that brings us apart into the same idea of my vulnerability enables me to empathize with your vulnerability and even though I may be in a privileged position in some attributes I will not abuse this position so we may be physically apart but we are connected in our feeling of vulnerability through intersectionality and I think that is very important so how do you describe about your opinions on this on the linking with environmental issues that we are facing as a commoner how do you say as a commoner so we are privileged of course as homo sapiens as human beings on this planet because we invent technologies that can change other beings and our feelings for the better or for the much worse so it is all up to the technology wielders and human beings are at the moment the primary technology species in the planet but we are not we are not that different in our capacity to suffer our capacity to suffer as compared with most other vertebrates is roughly the same even though we can use more technology we suffer as much as other vertebrate animals and they suffer as much as we do and so it enables us if we have the idea of intersectionality in mind enables us for example when we feel pain we can remind ourselves that other vertebrate animals also feel pain the same way as we do now for octopus they also feel pain but maybe not in the same way but we can still try to sympathize with octopus and everyone of course have different ability to extend the intersectionality and empathy forward which is fine some people are vegan some people are oyster vegan some people are vegetarian and so I may oyster vegan when I have the choice but when other people order food from the menu and it's already cooked I'm not that picky and so I think what people can remind each other is that we're a much a large part of the decision that we make will determine whether other species in the planet still have a future and whether they in their future may evolve into more intelligent species and open up new possibility for us if the early hominids did not get a chance because of dinosaurs or something without technology then we would not have the human civilization and if we destroy the habitat for other species if we make them suffer out of negligence or even for fun then they would not have the future to evolve into their own civilizations so for us I think we're just a steward for the planet Earth on this particular space and time we've been here for maybe a while but we need to ensure that we do not destroy the possibility of other intelligent civilizations that comes after us after maybe we move to other planets amazing, wonderful answer thank you so much so we were kind of we'd like to also hear well you just mentioned now that you are almost a vegan and they want to also link your idea of being more morally and ethically responsible towards the other things so do you have any interesting things or what you're working on including maybe something with your niece could you tell us more about your work your vision towards the future and plus how this good works could be applied for other countries or other communities yeah I think there's a lot of room for designers, for artists for people who are creative to find new and interesting ways to attract people to the idea of that you need to take care of the planet and the people in order to make a profit so the people in the planet before the profit but it only becomes profitable if people find it interesting and attracting and so of course the circular plus T-serving app is a very good example and I also helped the crowdfunding campaign of clay non-animal but they make a bag that looks very much like a letter but it does not pollute the environment nor do it harm the animal but of course for people to purchase a letter back they're into some textile feelings touches of whatever nobility it conveys or whatever you need to not only recreate such designer feelings in this new vegan letter but also to add even more to it so that people just like people who prefer beyond meat or the impossible burger to burger one need to feel like beyond so not only that it needs to taste good it also needs to taste in a way that seems futuristic that you find this as something generally novel something new something that you will share with your friends in order for it to make into a widespread idea not just people who are already vegan but people who are not vegan would prefer for example the impossible burger not because it's vegan but because it tastes great right and so we need more creative types we need more people who are into you know gastronomy into design into art and so on to show that this kind of lifestyle is preferable not only because it's ethical but because it's fun I just remember like we would like to hear about you have a team and your team would be really working hard to implement all these ideas that you've got so how do you make those people more efficient and effectively working on the tasks that they have like do you encourage any meditation like for example in Japan and Silicon Valley they found that this is very helpful for people's performance I make sure that there's plenty of quietness in the social innovation lab or in the closet bedroom that I just went into before this interview so everybody can have some meditation or pause throughout the day and I also emphasize that sleep is very important so I would not for the people who work with me who do not want to be interrupted on their off-work time I do not bother them about work and so if there is a work issue that needs to be resolved but it's already 10pm or something instead of waking my colleagues up I would just handle that myself I think it's very important for people to have a full night's sleep in order to carefully integrate whatever we have learned in the daytime so that by the time we wake up we'll be a more holistic person if we get interrupted all the time during the sleep right before the sleep and by an alarm clock and so on one would feel fragmented and therefore not that able to empathize or to take all the signs do you meditate do you practice any meditation? I practice Taoist meditation so how do you find it helpful for you? Do you encourage your team members? I learned it when I was like 4 or 5 years old so it's been with me as long as I remember but most of my colleagues have their own ways to meditate some with music some with coffee apparently some with making tea and things like that or flowers and so on I think everyone has their own way to connect to the cosmos and so I'm not prescribing any particular method but I make sure that there's plenty of time and space for such individuals Could you also tell us more about your social innovation that is planning to do in the near future? Yeah so very soon we will have the social innovation the Asia Pacific social innovation summit or APS INS and this is the first time that it went digital so it allows us to connect to the social enterprise word form which was going to take place in Nova Scotia Canada but now it's online so we make sure that this is become a worldwide event and in that we will celebrate for example there's a chocolate company called Chocoloni in the Netherlands and which makes chocolate in a way that is fair trade that doesn't harm the environment or the society that are not exploitative and so on and so by making sure that people learn about the production lines of the chocolates it also raises people's awareness of the imbalances in labour relationships and so on when it comes to the manufacturing of other chocolates and so what we want is to amplify which means the best ideas and the best social innovations across the world and we can then share the not really best practice maybe better practices and inspire a future where people regardless of their generation or their ethnicity or their areas of study they can all feel connected through the global goals into solving the problem together as a group and partnering for the common goals instead of just working with their own ideas and then cancelling each other out and so I think the Asia Pacific social innovations summit is something that's really worth a try and is the whole so there's no excuse to miss it now it's at apsis.tw Yes I saw that I started following you on Twitter and then saw that one that's cool we'll join for sure so I'm a little bit run out of question with that so do you have any interesting the things that you were which could benefit the other people any idea or initiative that you were thinking of implementing or also this Asia Pacific summit may cover some topics related to this COVID response how this, the countries which are very much affected could come out from this situation or also it seems like it's going to continue quite long and we accept it and yes also there might be another pandemic because like it starts 3.0 Yeah I think that looks really unsettling so what do you think about all this how do you what's your opinion on how other countries should react all this and that makes I think my main message is really the government should trust the citizens in Taiwan we trust the citizens to for example wear a mask to protect oneself from one's own hands and it's such a simple idea that connects the calmness and the use of soap and alcohol and sanitizers and a mask and because it only works if you have all three together it's like the pieces of the puzzle if you only wear a mask but doesn't wash your hands that's not useful if you wash your hands but in a very panicked way that doesn't work either because you have to wash it very thoroughly and so there's a lot of ways for example with a cute spoke stock or a zong chai with this a very simple way to remember the various ways to wash your hands and then we connect the idea of wearing a mask into you know if you see other people wearing a mask or if you wear a mask yourself and then you're going to touch your face remember to do the and so on so I think that's really the Taiwanese playbook instead of a very top down way of explaining very little and demanding very much in Taiwan, the Central Epidemic Command Center doesn't demand much but explains everything like in the used to be every day in the 2pm press conference they answer each and every question from the journalists no matter how absurd the ideas may seem Commander Chen Shizhong always said oh let's think about it together oh you can teach me a pigmalion effect whereby trusting the citizens with like full of our heart then the citizens become trustworthy and innovative but if we doubt the citizens and put some I don't know harsh fines or even threatening a penalty putting people in jail or things like that issuing a state of emergency a full city-wide lockdown and things like that maybe the government is afraid of the people instead of trusting the people and then the people will become something that the government is afraid of because people will rebel against such draconian measures so it's a self-fulfilling prophecy if we think the government I think the citizens are trustworthy the citizens will become worthy of our trust if we think the citizens are to be feared then the citizens will become very fearsome indeed that's the main message I want to share I don't know if the time is yeah that's pretty much it 15 minutes yeah we're good so thank you so much for joining us for the century and we are so impressed and appreciative for the answers the wonderful answers that you gave so yeah thank you very much again thank you for the great questions do you have any other comments yeah well I would then just wish people watching the television a good local time and live long and prosper one more thing there's a thing that's all here so our team usually we do encourage people to be more veg and go green and save the planet so could you tell us we have lots of actresses and lots of famous people who say that be vegan like these I just had a lunch but it was not entirely vegan it has half an egg in it or maybe you could say be veg go green to save the planet okay sure before that you can say like digital minister and veg go green sure look at this one okay hello I'm Ojitong digital minister and then just go straight into this no connecting faces oh thank you oh you can say thank you for doing the work that you were to be for the environment and the animal so be veg go green be veg go green to save the planet okay hello I'm Ojitong television minister thank you all for all your work you're doing for our environment be veg go green to save the planet that was amazing thank you