Sure, of course.

It’s a input field. I can write anything, and it’s next to the party field.

On the registration document. As a minister I have to register my personal details.

I wrote "none" at the gender field, and also at the political party field. They’re close to each other.

We don’t have a gender field on the passport.

2005. Some editors in Wikipedia picked up on it a few months afterwards, and then the rest of these citations.

Of course we’ve never met face to face, or sometimes over the phone, there’s a lot of confusion. I was explaining that I’m this transgender who is OK with whatever gender pronouns that people refer me to, and I’m living as a woman for a while, but it’s not a ...

All I did was that I wrote a blog post that said Runtime Typecasting, which is an inside joke to programming language geeks, that explained that there are some people in Europe know me as a woman and some people in Asia know me as a man.

The thing with Wikipedia is that I cannot edit it myself, the parts that are wrong. No, I didn’t do that. I didn’t do anything like that.

Wikipedia probably.

Where did you read that?

Yeah, I did. It’s very well known here.

I filled in none as the gender when I was sworn in.

Minus six minutes.

There’s MediaTek. No, I don’t think any of them are particularly known. Of course, they would be known by their German counterparts, anyone working in the IT industry. But in the general population, no, I don’t think any of them are household brands. We’re looking at this very understated part ...

There’s Foxconn.

It’s hugely profitable but it’s not a brand. I don’t think TSMC thinks it as a problem. If the industry doesn’t think of it as a problem then that we shouldn’t.

Taiwan Semiconductor, which produces a majority of all the chips. It’s the number one semiconductor foundry for many years in their particular domain. Of course, one would hear "Intel Inside" but not "TSMC inside".

Not particularly. That’s just the traditional place Taiwan had in the value chain, and it’s a very valuable place. Like the TSMC, although none of the computers that we use...

That’s right.

[laughs] Yeah.

[laughs] I would not comment on that.

OEMs, yes.

People wouldn’t think HTC as a software company. They will think they are a phone or a VR company, but of course what drives that phone or VR is mostly software.

Yeah. There’s the Trend Anti-virus, of course, but it’s one comparatively narrow segment. Yeah, it’s mostly as part of the Internet of Things or as part of some cutting edge hardware that you see telling yourself that it’s almost always part of a integration with software and hardware.

Of course, the gaming computer that Asus, or Acer, or MSI brought out. Or any of those WiFi, or any of those peripherals, they’re all from Taiwan and they’re recognizable brands. However, it’s not like there’s one single piece of app from Taiwan that everybody would recognize. It’s the computing ...

The thing is that Taiwan is mostly around...the software scene is mostly revolved around the hardware and firmware thing. The German people will have heard of VIVE, of course, which is this VR headset that’s currently the best one. I don’t know for how long, but currently the best one.

In foreign countries?

Yeah. The thing is that they are known mostly within Taiwan.

Sure.

If you want to be a intranet business, that is primarily single population, then of course you want to found it in Beijing. On the other hand, if you wanted to be a Internet operation, then Taipei is a pretty reasonable choice. So is Tel Aviv, or Singapore.

Of course, the main thing is that whether it’s an intranet business, or whether it’s an Internet business, or if it’s both. It should be a very clear business decision.

You happen to know that kind of guy? [laughs]

It’s not like out of the blue you choose Taiwan for the health insurance. There is more like you already have some connection or you have Taiwanese friends, then you discover it is a friendly place for you to pursue your...

Yeah. If you stay in Taiwan, there’s food and everything, but there’s this regulatory framework that we’re looking at that basically naturalizes a lot of Taiwan’s social welfare system, and also the programs around foreign students, and graduates, and so on so that they could naturally develop their interests after ...

You can choose both. It’s a plus.

Also startups, yes.

Foreign talents.

There’s a lot of ideas and thoughts. It’s not just to Hangzhou students. It’s also linked to a Kaohsiung classroom. It’s a three place connection kind of thing.

Invited me? Because I was considered a expert in that particular field I guess, and I spoke Mandarin, which was a plus. Then I introduced all these open‑source tools that they can run inside intranet, which is an extra plus. I wasn’t personally there in the flesh. I was a ...

Of arts, yeah.

The China Academy of Arts.

It’s virtual reality for civil deliberation.

Yeah, I taught a class in Hangzhou.

I virtually taught a class in Hangzhou even after I became the digital minister.

Sure. Of course we look at each other’s ideas. There’s quite a bit of flow of people both ways also.

That’s great.

The same holds for anyone who’s outside the firewall, Japan or Singapore. Nobody said we want to capture the Weibo market.

Taiwan is on the outside of that firewall. There’s no way for Taiwan to build something and capture this intranet market as a Chinese company without unification. It’s out of the question. It’s just not possible.

A lot of them are satisfying the same needs of social means and so on, but because of their configuration of the China intranet, they were able to get a upper hand compared to foreign multinationals.