taiwan's digital democracy the island nation of taiwan produces some of the world's most advanced technology commands a robust industrial system and is governed by efficient state institutions moreover it has succeeded in leveraging information technology and citizen participation into a uniquely successful system of digital democracy most recently credited with containing kofit 19 in taiwan this is thanks to a legacy of innovation in response to geopolitical imperatives namely the threat posed by mainland china while past success does not guarantee future results and key challenges loom taiwan remains one of the most functional polities in the world in 2020 taiwan attracted international praise for its extremely effective response to the covet 19 pandemic the country suffered only seven coveted deaths in total that year and quickly restored normalcy to daily life while much of the rest of the world was still in lockdown taiwan's success drew plaudits for its unprecedented governance techniques that blended technology with democratic decentralization with some commentators citing the nation as a model for the west to emulate but taiwan's success in this regard was not a fluke rather these capacities come from the taiwanese government's long-standing open-mindedness to reinventing its governmental institutions and overall strategic posture based on the capabilities made possible by the latest advances in technology globally there is widespread perception that taiwan punches above its weight whether it's in the realms of technology industry or innovations and governance this perception is largely true for one simple reason it has to located off the southeastern coast of mainland china the democratic and de facto independent country is a key western ally and a thorn in the side of the chinese communist party which has continued to officially claim taiwan as a renegade province of mainland china ever since taiwan as we know it was founded by the losing side of the chinese civil war in 1949 with a population and economy just a fraction the size of the people's republic of china taiwan's government has always known that its continued independent existence would depend on superior strategy with economic development technological innovation and institutional flexibility forming the core of such a strategy throughout the 20th century the taiwanese government undertook conscious efforts to build an indigenous industrial base and then an indigenous silicon valley on top of it in an effort to imitate the best parts of the west these efforts ironically have now surpassed the west itself and have also resulted in a high trust highly technical literate government and society that are capable of applying the same open-minded and strategic thinking necessary for foreign policy to domestic issues as well taiwan was one of the first countries in the world to detect and respond to the burgeoning pandemic in part thanks to a senior government health official reading a highly upvoted post on taiwan's largest online message board about a new disease spreading from china this might be a funny anecdote in other contexts but in taiwan this detail is emblematic of the reasons taiwan's pandemic response was so abnormally effective compared to most other countries it was not only the government's response that deserves credit for the country's success on covid but rather the productive interactions between centralized state institutions and civil society at large where the state developed centralized systems for decentralized public use and conversely pays attention to and confers legitimacy on useful initiatives and information provided by ordinary people without government titles taiwan's pandemic response was so abnormally effective compared to most other countries it was not only the government's response that deserves credit for the country's success on kovid but rather the productive interactions between centralized state institutions and civil society at large where the state develops centralized systems for decentralized public use and conversely pays attention to and confers legitimacy on useful initiatives and information provided by ordinary people without government titles in addition to news and information about covet 19 rapidly spreading through the taiwanese internet being monitored by both ordinary citizens and government officials alike civic hackers quickly built tools in collaboration with the government to help people avoid infection and prepare for the pandemic such as live infection maps and bots to combat misinformation about the virus both existing centralized efforts such as integration of national health insurance data with customs and immigration institutions online reporting of personal data and the establishment of a national command center for disease control as well as quickly develop new ones such as cell phone tracking ramping up mask protection and quarantine procedures all proved to be decisive but only with the voluntary informed and enthusiastic participation of a digitally active public that trusted government measures and had also previously lived through a pandemic when sars struck the nation more than a decade earlier with remembered crucial lessons such as the importance of face masks all of these factors combined to power taiwan's success in the west including the united states even though some similar actions were undertaken such as building online monitoring tools there is no baseline of social trust and institutional capacity to put such tools to use rather than shut out and oppose these confrontational yet broadly aligned grassroots movements the taiwanese government decided to integrate them into the official government structure the most prominent civic hackers in taiwan are organized around the gov program headed by taiwanese digital minister audrey tang the gov program has its origins in 2012 when taiwanese technologists and hackers dissatisfied with the government's own efforts to set up new digital infrastructure decided to simply build it themselves one of the earliest hackathons that led to the creation of gov was named the zeroth hackathon of martial mobilization in a direct reference to taiwan's 38-year-long imposition of martial law from 1949 to 1987 intended to organize the entire country against any possible threat from mainland china perhaps living memory of such geopolitical pressures combined with a high-trust democratic culture contributed to taiwanese technologists civic mindset which contrasts sharply with the more detached apolitical and market-oriented value system of western technologists audrey tang herself had worked in silicon valley and was a major open source software contributor including to the gov program prior to getting involved in taiwanese politics she was one of the activists who stormed and occupied taiwan's parliament in 2014 as part of the sunflower student movement which demanded greater transparency about a proposed trade deal with mainland china that critics argued would leave taiwan vulnerable to political pressure from beijing rather than shut out and oppose these confrontational yet broadly aligned grassroots movements the taiwanese government decided to integrate them into the official government structure a self-described anarchist audrey tang was nonetheless first hired as a consultant to the taiwanese government in 2015 and then appointed as the first digital affairs minister in 2016 with a non-hierarchical staff of 15 to help implement taiwan's new eight-year digital national plan a self-described anarchist audrey tang was nonetheless first hired as a consultant to the taiwanese government in 2015 and then appointed as the first digital affairs minister in 2016 with a non-hierarchical staff of 15 to help implement taiwan's new eight-year digital national plan much as the government's integration of information technology into its functioning proved decisive in taiwan's kovid response the taiwanese government has similarly thoroughly integrated information technologies into the day-to-day business of government for officials and citizens alike this digital government or e-government strategy may seem somewhat novel or foreign in america where jokes and complains about trips to brick-and-mortar dmv offices are as salient as ever but in taiwan an ordinary citizen can largely and productively interact with government bureaucracies with not just a web browser but on a single website moreover this isn't even just because the taiwanese government has successfully digitized most of its functions but because it deliberately wanted to design a system where citizens would enjoy online ease of access to any conceivable government service another government operated web service allows citizens to inquire about and discuss legislation and policy issues as they are being drafted and implemented including a future for citizens to send emails directly to the heads of government agencies taiwanese citizens who log on to the central web portal using the very simple and appropriate url www.gov.tw are able to quickly find links to government services from birth certificates to registering deaths and every other service that might be useful at any stage of life in between organized quite literally according to a graphic of a presumably taiwanese stick man's life from birth to education work and then retirement and death searching the site directory yields information and forms covering everything from military service to registering candidacies for elections from both the national government as well as city and county governments the government operates a platform called my data that allows citizens after proper verification to download any information the government has on them such as home or vehicle ownership registration insurance status personal income data and even their own national id photograph another government operated web service allows citizens to inquire about and discuss legislation and policy issues as they are being drafted and implemented including a feature for citizens to send emails directly to the head of government agencies this digitization extends to the back end of government services as well taiwanese government agencies began exchanging documents electronically all the way back in the year 2000 on a dedicated broadband internet network as well as maintaining an official online system for government procurement including a database of unsatisfactory contractors the taiwanese government's computerization push dates back from the 1980s though it was in 1997 that the research development and evaluation commission established the government's backbone network and began the push for digitizing government operations and services in the early 2000s this also included official efforts to bring internet access to rural areas by 2019 the internet penetration rate in taiwan stood at 93 percent of the population with 98 percent of internet users using a mobile phone to connect to the web taiwan's large digital footprint both governmental and civilian and poor relationship with mainland china naturally create a serious cyber security problem for the country taiwan's government faces 20 to 40 million cyber attacks every month including about 100 000 each month that specifically target taiwan's national security bureau moreover it is no surprise that about 80 of successful attacks are identified as coming from mainland china the first taiwan-china hacker war occurred all the way back in 1999 as mainland chinese retaliation to statements by the then taiwanese president when chinese hackers infiltrated taiwanese computer networks more than 160 times this incident prompted the creation of taiwan's national information and security task force which was the taiwanese government's primary organization for cyber defense until 2016 when the government established the department of cyber security shortly afterwards taiwanese president tsai ying wen created the information communication and electronic force command as an independent military command tasked with confronting china's hacker enemies this incident prompted the creation of taiwan's national information and security task force which was the taiwanese government's primary organization for cyber defense until 2016 when the government established the department of cyber security shortly afterwards taiwanese president tsai ing wen created the information communication and electronic force command as an independent military command tasked with confronting china's hacker armies this independent cyber warfare command was the first of its kind in the world according to president tsai cyber security is national security the taiwanese government has not only long spearheaded and integrated innovations in digital government but is itself responsible for spearheading the development of taiwan's technology industry as part of its overall strategy for economic development and national sovereignty much as mainland china tries to disrupt taiwan's digital footprint to its advantage it also tries to leverage taiwan's democratic discourse since taiwan began to liberalize in the late 1980s taiwan has enjoyed a flourishing media and journalism sector with a relatively free press though arguably also dominated by tabloid sensationalism since taiwan began to liberalize in the late 1980s taiwan has enjoyed a flourishing media and journalism sector with a relatively free press though arguably also dominated by tabloid sensationalism taiwan's four largest newspapers are editorially divided by their sympathy or antipathy to unification with mainland china the chinatimes and the united daily news are broadly considered to be nationalistic and sympathetic to china the liberty times whose owners also published taiwan's largest english language paper the taipei times and daily apple are broadly considered pro-taiwanese independents and anti-china these divides are more than merely editorial the hong kong resident founder of apple daily was arrested by the chinese government in 2020 for violating the territory's new national security law and sentenced to 14 months in jail in 2021 conversely the china times tycoon owner lives in shanghai has massive business interests in mainland china and ideologically supports unification over the years china has deliberately used its economic and democratic heft as well as domestic censorship to shift taiwanese media discourse into a pro-china direction intuitively it makes sense that a global leader in digital government like taiwan is also a global leader in technology but why exactly is that the case simply put because the taiwanese government has not only long spearheaded and integrated innovations in digital government but is itself responsible for spearheading the development of taiwan's technology industry as part of its overall strategy for economic development and national sovereignty take for example a current project seeking approximately 1.34 billion u.s dollars of foreign research and development investment in the country while simultaneously spending approximately 350 million dollars in subsidies to help attract the capital crucially unlike many other countries spending vast sums in order to shift themselves into an information technology driven service economy taiwan can in fact credibly follow through on converting that capital into a valuable r d the best justification for this is not statistical the number of doctorates within the country cannot tell us if those doctorates are in fact evidence of skill or if the nation has the social technology to use those skills rather we know that taiwan is the site of standout technology conglomerates like the taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company which is a leading supplier of integrated circuits to the world supplying such firms as apple the firm was founded by morris chang in the late 1980s after chang worked at various chip manufacturers in the united states and realized that he could create a firm back home in taiwan that simply manufactured whatever the engineers back in the states dreamed up a fabricator-less foundry this strategy most recently led to tsmc along with south korea's samsung successfully beating us-based intel to create seven nanometer scale and five nanometer scale chips in 2018 and 2020 respectively by partnering with outside designers including america's amd the centrality of tsmc to the world economy was vividly demonstrated in the 2021 chip shortage caused in large measure by surging demand and a shortage of some raw materials while this could demonstrate taiwan's capability for manufacturing not r d the country's ability to control a sizeable amount of the market by naturally scaling with the human resources and capital while this could demonstrate taiwan's capability for manufacturing not r d the country's ability to control a sizeable amount of the market by naturally scaling with the human resources and capital available shows r d prowess too taiwan has a highly educated workforce with 45 of the working age population possessing a bachelor's degree compared to 44 percent of u.s workers
and 17 of chinese workers as it developed the nation also demonstrated itself culturally able to take advantage of educational systems abroad in order to boost the skills of their own workforce morris chang himself was educated at mit and stanford before going on to found tsmc whether it's in technology industry or good governance east asian governments from japan to south korea to taiwan seek to replicate some successful western effect and end up building an entire rationalized institutional system that is geared to produce and maintain that effect often ending up with a far more streamlined system than the messy and contingent western system which produced the success in question in the first place tsmc was also not the first semiconductor company in taiwan the first the united microelectronics corporation still exists and along with tsmc was spun out of the industrial technology research institute a taiwanese government r d institution founded in 1973. itri is headquartered within the shinshu science park an industrial park set up by the taiwanese state in coordination with taiwan's leading universities and which is often dubbed the silicon valley of taiwan shinshu park was proposed by xu xinshu the former president of taiwan's national tsinghua university and then minister of science and technology for the country shu had traveled the world looking for effective strategies to improve taiwan's technology industry and was directly inspired by california's silicon valley the taiwanese finance minister for the first 30 years of independence lee kwok ting in the late 1970s even consulted frederick turman dean of engineering at stanford on the correct strategy for getting taiwanese nationals who had gone overseas to return to build taiwan's technology sector turman was not only a bright technological mind in his own right but the architect of both stanford university's strategy of public-private partnership on research after world war ii and of stanford industrial park today renamed stanford research park that has provided a physical home to companies such as hewlett packard varian xerox park steve jobs next tesla and facebook over the decades the successful creation of a silicon valley by design evidences vision and operational capacity on the part of the taiwanese government this is an instance of a recurring phenomenon in the imitation of the west by the late to industrialize east whether it's in technology industry or good governance east asian governments from japan to south korea to taiwan seek to replicate some successful western effect and end up building an entire rationalized institutional system that is geared to produce and maintain that effect often ending with a far more streamlined system than the messy and contingent western system which produced the success in question in the first place following the creation of shinshu park firms and government institutions flocked to the zone attracted by advantageous tax breaks and co-location tsmc and umc are now both headquartered within the park as are various other firms foreign and domestic and the taiwanese space agency chaotong university and national xinhua university are headquartered next door this was not an accident shu intentionally mimicked silicon valley's proximity to berkeley and stanford overall this strategy seems to have been a resounding success stanford officials now regularly visit it's hard to find a country as obviously constrained by geopolitical logic as taiwan the island has been viewed by communist ruled mainland china as a rogue breakaway province ever since its founding in 1949 when chiang kai-shek and his nationalist guangming tang party fled to the island which to this day is officially known as the republic of china implying that the ruling chinese communist party are illegitimate usurpers cross-strait relations did enjoy a thaw in the late 1990s when mainland china opted for a strategy of economic integration with taiwan aimed at eventual unification but recent years have seen a reversion to high mutual tensions in part spurred by the aforementioned sunflower student movement that rejected further economic integration with the mainland and china's correspondingly more aggressive posture since then with a resurgent mainland having basically caught up with and in some areas such as military technology surpassed the earlier to develop taiwan the future of the island as a de facto independent state looks uncertain it is possible that taiwan's highly warranted apprehension of an invasion by the mainland chinese has provided the national cohesion and trust necessary to undertake long-term efforts in technological and industrial planning and maintain trust and collaboration between the state and the people as world war 1 era intellectual randolph-born put it war is indeed the health of the state profits aside this is reason enough to pursue industrial and technological authority simultaneously one should not underestimate the extent to which this pressure from beijing has directly translated into effective responses in taiwan this is true even in the realm of national defense itself occupying the island would require the largest amphibious invasion in history and it is only possible on a select number of narrow beachheads for a few months of the year through a combination of fortification terrain cyber and missile attacks on the mainland urban warfare rabid near-suicidal citizen participation and the feasible possibility of an american blockade of the straits of malacca near singapore one can indeed imagine a credible taiwanese signal to beijing that they are really not worth the price of invasion however we do not see such a signal when we examine the current reality in taiwan china analyst tanner greer has convincingly asserted a more pessimistic view of taiwan's geopolitical posture today developed over nine months of interviews with taiwanese security researchers recently discharged conscripts officials in the governing dpp party arms engineers and active duty roc army and navy officers according to greer the taiwanese simply do not have the will to turn their island into an impenetrable fortress challenges in the recent two decades or so include paralysis within the military and national service establishment partisan gridlock poor military strategy poor military training and procurement brain drain from the military and a spirit of defeatism among the political class these security concerns are of course only the most obvious weaknesses that the mainland could exploit economic pressure and even a naval blockade appear far more likely than an invasion this is all the more reason for taiwan to pursue innovation and capacity building in areas of technology and industry not directly related to military affairs but without the military capacity to back these spheres up they remain ultimately vulnerable only with this industrial base can the virtuous cycle of innovation take off even seemingly immaterial innovation such as the realm of software both ultimately comes from material breakthroughs in silicon technology and must be undertaken in tandem with evolving systems of hardware technology does not come from a vacuum and it is not enough for a government to merely spend money on spurring innovation or to establish r d institutes and special economic zones rather a thriving innovation ecosystem requires an industrial base new technologies must be iterated upon and manufactured and technologists must be able to draw upon a deep pool of technical personnel and know-how only with the space can the virtuous cycle of innovation take off even seemingly immaterial innovation such as in the realm of software both ultimately comes from material breakthroughs in silicon technology and must be undertaken in tandem with evolving systems of hardware and since the state has a crucial role in terraforming systems of political economy such that industry and technology can flourish for example by implementing effective industrial policy all of this is intimately bound up in problems of public policy in the 1950s the government of the island newly suffered from the spheres of control of both the imperial japanese and the chinese mainland itself pursued a policy of import substitution by which imports of manufactured goods are blocked in order to increase demand for domestically produced goods as a means of economic recovery after world war ii by the 1960s in order to spur growth and accelerate the process of industrialization taiwanese policymakers shifted to a policy of export orientation by which the state spurs fierce competition among industrial firms picking and supporting ones which can manufacture the most goods for export with an eye towards weaning those infant industries that they support by compelling them to eventually become self-sufficient a concept known as export discipline throughout the 1960s and 1970s the strategy worked and taiwan's industrial sector grew the system encountered some barriers as the 1970s wore on especially as the oil crisis of that decade began to eat into profits taiwan's strategy of industrialization which hitherto had focused on labor-intensive industries in order to employ the maximum number of people no longer made economic sense and the island's elites found that it would not be sufficient to catch up with the west in the late 1970s and early 1980s the taiwanese government changed tac again shifting their policy to favor capital and technology-intensive industries as an avenue of development in order to reignite growth and deepen their industrial system taiwanese policymakers used the post-war industrial base that they had built as a foundation atop which to create the highly functional technical system that we know today it was in 1980 for example that sin shu science park was founded into the 1980s the government began targeting particular strategic industries as foci of capital building and innovation one of the earliest ones being semiconductors and this process of strategic economic planning continues to this day although the growing threat from beijing looms over taiwan's successes it would be a mistake to let recent tensions and uncertainty cloud our judgment about the remarkable feats of taiwan's government taiwan has been ensuring its sovereignty by combining technological innovations with institutional flexibility for decades as most recently indicated by the democratized and resoundingly successful response to the kovit 19 pandemic whatever taiwan's future holds it is obvious that the island has already provided us with a valuable case study into the power of institutions to shape public policy industry and technology
2021-11-05