Audrey Tang is not your typical bureaucrat. Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs is the island’s youngest minister, as well as its first prominent non-binary public official. Homeschooled by journalist parents, she was a software developer and digital rights activist at the time of the 2014 Sunflower Movement, when young protestors occupied Taiwan’s legislature to oppose a trade deal with China. Tang, who was already involved in civic movements to promote government transparency, ended up being invited into the government where she took charge of technology initiatives and helped lead the government’s Covid response. She debuted as Minister of Digital Affairs in August 2022, during a peak in tensions with China following a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, who was at the time the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
In keeping with Tang’s transparency ethos, a full version of this interview has been released by her office in Chinese. The English translation has bee
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