Audrey Tang, thank you very much. It’s been a great pleasure.

Chinese? Native Taiwanese?

English, right?

That counts.

Which languages do you know now already?

If you think about your own life and career over the next few years, if you wish to increase your own empathy at the margin, what do you feel that calls for from you?

Sure, but any particular government is not interested in rotation per se. In fact, they would prefer its opposite over time.

If rotation is fundamental to your thought, it seems that most governments in the literal sense of that term are not always so interested in rotation, right? They want to push through a particular set of policies to serve interest groups and constituencies toward the end of being reelected.

Why aren’t there more Audrey Tangs in the other governments of the world?

What are your skills of rotation and scaling? How do you use them in the government?

Were you afraid that working in government would ruin or corrupt you?

How important is the skill of translation for becoming a better thinker?

In 2014, you were part of a group of activists that occupied Taiwan’s parliament building. What was your thinking behind participation in that activity? What were you hoping to accomplish? What did you see as the tradeoffs?

You didn’t go through the cycle of being educated in the United States the way many Taiwanese do. Do you think that’s given you a different perspective?

What’s the biggest misconception about transgender life and existence amongst intelligent, educated people?

Do you think there are cognitive disadvantages of being transgender?

Are there cognitive advantages to being transgender?

What was your family discussion table like?

Do you think there’s any cognitive disadvantage to being more objective and arguably more detached?

How did having a heart problem until age 12 shape your life?

For our final segment of this conversation, I’ll turn to what I call the Audrey Tang production function. At ages five to six, you read a lot of classical literature. What did you read and how did it shape you?

Why is it you think that Taiwan has been so much more open and accepting of LGBTQ than most or maybe all other parts of Asia?

Because of addiction. It’s like a touch-screen smartphone.

What’s your favorite eSport?

Shogi, right?

What’s the most popular eSport in Taiwan?

In both Japan and Taiwan, baseball is fairly popular, as it is in the United States, but most countries reject baseball altogether. Do you have a sense of why Taiwanese have welcomed baseball? Is it just historical accident, or revealing of something deeper?

The organization of streets and shops in Taiwan, especially Taipei, feels quite Japanese to me. Do you have the same impression?

Which are the most important remnants of Japanese influence remaining in Taiwan?

There’s a millenarian sense to it that’s a bit like some of tech utopianism, right? That the word should become an open place.

I believe no Chinese person from the mainland would have given me that answer. Another historical question: when you read about the Taiping Rebellion, for whom are you rooting, the rebels or the government?

As a Taiwanese, how do you think you understand earlier Chinese history in maybe a different way than Chinese mainlanders would?

Xi’an is the capital.

My home. But the Tang dynasty I thought would be your answer. There’s the Silk Road, right?

What’s your favorite Chinese dynasty and why?

If you’re recommending for a visitor an ideal trip to Taiwan, obviously they fly into Taipei. There’s plenty to do and see in Taipei — National Museum — but where else should they go, for you?

Do you ever worry that Taiwan has had so much success against COVID-19 that now the country is painted into a kind of corner, unwilling to give up its grand prize, and it just won’t be able to open to other places for a long time? Or do you think ...

Given Taiwan’s remarkable success with the pandemic, its amazing success with high-quality semiconductor chips, why are there in relative terms so few successful Taiwanese software companies? And to what features of the Taiwanese psyche do you attribute that?

Okay, I’m delighted to hear that. How much did Taiwan rely on privately written apps to combat the pandemic?

Have we started correcting them yet?

Now, my country, the United States, has made many, many mistakes at an almost metaphysical level. What is it in the United States that those mistakes have come from? What’s our deeper failing behind all those mistakes?

A few questions about the pandemic. How much of Taiwan’s success do you think was due to government’s openness, and how much do you think was due to the fact that in Taiwan, standards for privacy are different than in the West, and there’s a certain acceptance of government protocol?

No, no, the people, economists as thinkers. What’s their biggest defect or flaw?

You’re working, of course, in Taiwanese government. What’s the biggest thing wrong with economists?

Do you have any sense how that’s going? I know it’s only a year, but what are you seeing that’s different?

In the meantime.

I’m surprised. What would improve Taiwanese education the most?

Never?

How do you think Singapore differs in this regard? Is there a different understanding of Daoism there? More emphasis on Confucianism?

To what extent do you understand Daoism as standing in opposition to a more hierarchical Confucian view? Or do you think it’s simply a separate doctrine? By being a Daoist, do you view yourself as opposed to Confucianism?