That’s right.

If the Legislative Yuan passes it during this session, then we’ll just go ahead with this plan.

Golden card, yeah.

It’s called gold card.

The act is still awaiting legislative review, but it is one of the top bills for the upcoming session. We’re looking forward to start implementing this, what we call the gold-card visa program, starting at the end of the year.

For these kind of digital economy talents, we’re now offering a pretty long stay as in three years renewable. They can both find short term or long-term employment or self-employ or what we call digital nomads can enjoy a much better working environment in Taiwan, especially if they are considering ...

We’re also working on an act that is already in the Legislative Yuan that allows Silicon Valley’s talent to visit Taiwan without securing any particular employment here, because they may be just giving lectures, doing consultancy, and so on. At the current moment, they would need to use a travel ...

They’re pretty successful with the first batch. Each candidate has made three or four different companies competing on top of this governmental reimbursement program. I think the idea is not just to facilitate the move from Taiwan to Silicon Valley.

I think the first batch was about 35 people or so to sponsor their travel and work in the Silicon Valley to a certain amount and, for the top Silicon Valley companies, to discover these Taiwanese talents and for them to work for a given period, for a year or ...

There’s quite a few programs. For example, the Ministry of Science and Technology sponsors doctoral students and post-docs.

There’s many places that want to experiment with this kind of new technology.

This is what we’re working very closely with not just Taipei city but also Kaohsiung city. At the end of this year, they’re going to have a self-driving bus program there also and also financing for the Shalun city and so on.

Once they interact with bus operating hours or it extends outside of the bus lane, then it would need a regulatory framework for their experiment to happen.

Yes. That is one of the very early experiments with Taipei’s self-driving bus. Now, because they’re keeping to its own lane, the bus lane, and also operating during the hours that bus is not in operation in the midnight to 4:00 AM hours, they actually don’t need a special sandbox ...

Then other competitors can enter this new sector that is being built collaboratively by the civil society, by the private sector, and by the government. That’s the basic model we’re doing with FinTech first, but then with self-driving vehicles, and soon with many other areas, as well.

If this is a good idea, then the regulatory body have another six months to change their regulation to allow for this kind of innovation to happen as a legal trade, maybe a new type of trade, and then for the innovator to secure sufficient capital, because they’re legal now, ...

Maybe it’s a new type of uncrewed self-driving vehicle that’s integrated with a certain neighborhood, for example, and have a multi-stakeholder discussion to find out whether this experiment was a success. If this is not, if people think it’s not a good idea, then of course, the whole society is ...

That’s the idea. After six months, maybe the experimenter would like to extend the scope a little bit or continue for another six months. At most, after 12 months, the regulatory committee will talk with the society that has tried out this integration of new technology.

Because this is an experiment, it is limited in both time, as well as the persons, the number of people they can touch. Also, there is an extra transparency, accountability requirement that the experimenter need to explain what is being experimented on and what happens during the experiment.

The innovator can say, "For the next six months, I’m going to break this regulation and that regulation," but the government agrees not to punish, not to fine this company for it.

Once the government makes this decision, which is not at the cost of the innovator, but the government talks with the innovator about this, if this really needs a change of the regulation, then the government finds a place, an area that is willing to work with this innovator.

The government will work with this private sector innovator to try to interpret the existing law and regulations to see whether they can operate safely, legally, or it is really illegal at the moment, but it really should be legal because the law did not anticipate this innovation.

In both regards, we’re using this new idea of a law called sandbox, meaning that if an innovator want to make a new service that is currently unregulated by the law or the regulation, however, there’s part of the regulation or the law that says because it’s a legally ambiguous ...

I’ve mentioned two different areas. One is FinTech. One is self-driving vehicles.

By FinTech, it means financial technology, and by financial technology, it means computer programs that let people do financial transactions in a way that is faster, more efficient, more automated than traditional financial institutions.

We’re working, for example, with the FinTech sandbox.

It’s fine.

I’ll just take a couple minutes to explain, if that’s OK with you.

A sandbox, like children play in a sandbox.

For this kind of law, there is an approach that we’re using that agrees with some of the most advanced part in the United States, and also in other countries. It’s what we call a sandbox. Have you encountered this term before?

Many part of the traffic or transportation law make a very clear distinction between a driver and a vehicle, so this new type of regulatory entity poses a problem to the existing law because the car itself, or the boat, or the plane itself is the driver. What are you ...

Self-driving vehicles is very interesting because it makes the concept of a car or a plane or a boat, and a concept of a driver, overlap, because the vehicle is its own driver.

Autonomous vehicles, vehicles that drive themselves... Self-driving vehicles.

Definitely. Even in the States, not all of the states have the same attitude toward such cutting-edge or experimental technologies. The uncrewed vehicles is a very good example...

I can talk slower. That’s OK.

Yeah, but especially regulation, talent, and capital.

By digital economy, it’s an all-encompassing term, but it mostly talks about the part of economy that is only made possible because of computer and Internet technologies.

We just call them digital economy regulations, or digital economy-related laws and regulations.

[laughs] On any and every sector, but especially on tech law. That is to say, on FinTech, on uncrewed vehicles, on any part of the industry where the technology is going to places where the law did not anticipate them to go.

That’s right.

Uncrewed vehicles... Autonomous vehicles.

For example, at this very moment, we’re working on a sandbox experiment law for uncrewed vehicles. That includes, for example...

Quite a few things. First, we try to make a lot of government-to-government relationship going, like there’s a digital economy forum that makes sure our relevant laws and regulations are aligned.

The government is more like a platform. This is not a novel approach for many, especially Nordic countries and many part of EU, and more like Californian. They all think this way. In Asia, we’re pretty unique in just positioning ourselves, the government’s role not as a leading or regulatory ...

It is because Taiwan’s relative peaceful democratization process, and a very fine emphasis on human right and protection of consumer right and so on in the civil society, so evolved a way that instead of the government directing what the private sector should do, the private sector initiates most of ...

We work with the private sector innovators. We peacefully, and I would say agreeably solved, for example, the Uber regulation issue, as well as many other regulation issues regarding peer innovation, and not many Asian countries can say that.

We’re not putting any artificial limitations on what the local entrepreneurs, or foreign entrepreneurs visiting Taiwan, can do.

We have a very strong tradition of freedom of expression, of an open and neutral Internet, of free expression and so on.

For one, our freedom to innovate is complete.

There’s quite a few things that differentiates Taiwan with, say, Singapore or other Southeastern countries.