Latest / UK Column Radio / Former Taiwan Independence Supporter Is Now a Pragmatic Voice on Taiwan's Future | Angelica Oung

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Former Taiwan Independence Supporter Is Now a Pragmatic Voice on Taiwan's Future | Angelica Oung · UK Column Radio

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Silk and Steel
• 0:04
  Podcast. I'm your host, Carl Zah.
• 0:06
  Today we have a very special guest, Angelica, all the way
• 0:10
  from Taiwan. Sorry, how do you pronounce your
• 0:13
  last name Angelica? Angelica.
• 0:15
  Ong. Yeah, it's Ong.
• 0:16
  Angelica pronounce it Ong. In Chinese, it's Ong.
• 0:21
  Yeah. So, Angelica Ong, how would I
• 0:24
  describe you? You know what?
• 0:26
  I better let you introduce yourself.
• 0:29
  Sure. Hello everybody, my name is
• 0:31
  Angelica Ong and I'm a pro nuclear activist.
• 0:37
  That's my job. But I also do a lot of
• 0:39
  commentary online, mostly about what I consider the Sinosphere,
• 0:44
  China, Taiwan, and and beyond. Basically, I think there's a lot
• 0:49
  going on right now. And I've always commented on
• 0:54
  geopolitics since I was doing reporting.
• 0:58
  I was a business reporter for a long time.
• 1:01
  And I think actually the geopolitics part is shaping up
• 1:06
  for the it's taking up a lot of my mental space, let's say.
• 1:10
  But I can't really say it's what I do because nobody's really
• 1:14
  paying me for it apart from my lovely subscribers on Sub Stack.
• 1:18
  So subscribe. I'm little I'm curious about
• 1:24
  your background. So you're obviously based in
• 1:26
  Taiwan, but you do sound like you you are speaking North
• 1:29
  American English. Did you spend significant time
• 1:32
  in America? I'm a dual citizen.
• 1:36
  My mom actually was so determined to make me an
• 1:39
  American that she was pregnant with me and she kind of hid hid
• 1:43
  her pregnancy under a big coat and did the whole did the whole
• 1:50
  giving birth to me in California thing so I would have birthright
• 1:54
  citizenship. I didn't really return to the US
• 1:57
  until my college days, but I've lived outside of Taiwan before
• 2:01
  that and I just really took to it.
• 2:05
  I, I felt like as soon as I arrived in America, I was an
• 2:09
  American. I assimilated very well given
• 2:13
  the milieu, and I ended up in Los Angeles where I was actually
• 2:17
  working in the food industry. I was a pastry chef at Lincook
• 2:22
  when COVID hit and that was when I came back to Taiwan.
• 2:27
  Before that, I'm sorry. Sure, no problem.
• 2:31
  Yeah, yeah, I was living in like the shittier West LA basically.
• 2:37
  And I. Well W alley is the nicer part.
• 2:40
  What are you talking about? Like I.
• 2:42
  I no no no, there's like a little shitty triangle right
• 2:45
  between Santa Monica and West LA, right on the Brentwood.
• 2:49
  So I lived in the shitty triangle between 3 very nice
• 2:52
  areas, but I cooked in very nice restaurants in all of those
• 2:56
  areas. So it was perfect for me.
• 2:59
  I never thought I'd return to Taiwan again or to journalism
• 3:02
  because I thought that was all in the past.
• 3:04
  And then COVID hit and all of a sudden there was like, do you
• 3:09
  remember when the NBA did their big shutdown?
• 3:12
  And that was when everybody disappeared from the restaurant?
• 3:15
  And after a few days, the restaurant was closed for the
• 3:19
  rest of COVID. And I flew back to Taipei and I
• 3:22
  was feeling very, very lost, like what's going on with my
• 3:25
  life, you know? Then we had no idea how long the
• 3:28
  thing was going to last. I didn't know when I left LA
• 3:31
  that it was basically like leaving LA as a home forever
• 3:36
  with only a suitcase. Basically went back to
• 3:40
  journalism in Taipei. It was kind of like Freaky
• 3:43
  Friday because it was what what I did in my 20s.
• 3:47
  So I became a business reporter at Taipei Times, the first news
• 3:53
  outlet I ever wrote for. Yeah.
• 3:56
  But I quickly grew beyond that and really became interested in
• 3:59
  energy, and that's where my journey took me eventually.
• 4:06
  How did you transition to a pro nuclear activist?
• 4:11
  Yeah, actually, when I first got into energy, my big thing was
• 4:15
  offshore wind, right? I wouldn't know this till later,
• 4:18
  but basically, in order to fill the gap that's going to be
• 4:24
  caused by the DPP campaign promise to shut off all the
• 4:28
  nuclear power plants on this island, they have to find
• 4:31
  another source. It's politically impossible to
• 4:36
  build any more coal plants, and they needed something that was
• 4:40
  renewable. And Taiwan is a island half the
• 4:45
  size of Tasmania, but we have the around the same population
• 4:48
  as all of Australia, plus a highly developed manufacturing
• 4:53
  economy. So we needed renewable energy in
• 4:56
  bulk. We knew solar wasn't going to do
• 4:58
  it. 70% of the island is mountainous, there's hardly any
• 5:02
  flat arable land, so it's going to have to be something else.
• 5:07
  And offshore wind seems to provide the kind of bulk energy
• 5:12
  that would be needed to replace nuclear.
• 5:15
  So the government actually invested billions and billions
• 5:19
  of dollars into the scheme. And all the European developers
• 5:25
  kind of found a lifeline because this was when 20/16/2017, when
• 5:31
  their freedom tariffs were starting to get caught in
• 5:34
  Europe. So coming to Taiwan seemed like
• 5:37
  a bonanza for them and for President Thai.
• 5:42
  It made for a very campaign ready slogan.
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  It's like we're following in the footstep of Europe and this new
• 5:49
  technology is going to free us from generating with atomic
• 5:55
  power forever. We will deliver on the DP PS
• 5:58
  long standing promise of a nuclear free homeland.
• 6:03
  So I plunged myself into this industry and quickly became very
• 6:06
  well known because I think one of my strong points is able to
• 6:10
  explain things from the Taiwanese point of view and the
• 6:14
  Western point of view and back again.
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  And by the by the time I emerged on the scene in 2020, there's
• 6:21
  already like heavy friction between the Western developers
• 6:25
  and the Taiwanese government. In short, they tried to do
• 6:29
  something that was probably questionable in the 1st place,
• 6:33
  replacing firm cheap nuclear power with expensive complicated
• 6:38
  offshore wind that is intermittent, but it could have
• 6:42
  been done better. It the whole scheme was very,
• 6:44
  very ill advised from the point of view of how it was set up.
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  So I discovered through becoming a very good offshore wind
• 6:54
  reporter and quite well known and I ran my own newsletter and
• 6:58
  it was doing actually quite well.
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  Certainly, you know, I was surprised that I was able to
• 7:06
  make it on my own, which is hard in the media world these days.
• 7:10
  But I I discovered through the this process that offshore wind
• 7:14
  wasn't a great match for Taiwan as an energy source.
• 7:17
  And the more I learned about how the grid works and how how much
• 7:22
  we needed like stability in the grid, the more I realized
• 7:28
  turning off the nuclear power plant plants was just the most
• 7:32
  terrible decision for Taiwan you can imagine.
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  And I started on the side campaigning more for nuclear
• 7:40
  energy. And for a while it was just
• 7:44
  purely, purely a passion project.
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  I wasn't getting paid for it. In fact I was getting a lot of
• 7:49
  blowback from the offshore wind community for it.
• 7:52
  But I kept going. And funnily enough, I went to
• 7:58
  COP like 3-2 years ago. It was the one in Dubai, COP 28,
• 8:04
  and I I got a nuclear, I got a gig promoting nuclear energy
• 8:10
  there from a philanthropist. So everything seemed to line up.
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  I returned to Taiwan and started doing nuclear activism full time
• 8:20
  because I don't think it's just the right choice for Taiwan.
• 8:23
  I'm actually increasingly convinced that it's the correct
• 8:27
  choice for the planet, or at least the 100% wind and solar
• 8:32
  solution is not just going to work out.
• 8:35
  And I I'm very glad I took that decision because that's a lot
• 8:38
  edgier to say two years ago than it is now.
• 8:43
  So my quite obvious, my question is why is a ruling party of
• 8:48
  Taiwan, DPP have a anti nuclear platform?
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  Because nuclear power has been in Taiwan since what, like
• 8:55
  1980s, nineteen 70s? It's been it's been there for
• 8:58
  for a long time. Why?
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  Why it is there a drive to remove the nuclear power from
• 9:03
  Taiwan? I, I, I I I'm trying to
• 9:05
  understand that. Actually, anti nuclearism has
• 9:08
  been there ever since the inception of the DPP and it's
• 9:12
  very understandable because they were formed formally as a party
• 9:18
  and in their original charter was we, we're going to have a
• 9:22
  nuclear free homeland. And it's very, very
• 9:24
  understandable given the times. It was the 80s, it was right
• 9:29
  after Chernobyl. It was truly more of an unknown
• 9:33
  back then than it is now that Atomic Energy is super safe and
• 9:38
  important for our planet, right. So I, I actually don't don't
• 9:43
  question the DP PS decision to be anti nuclear back then maybe
• 9:47
  I would have been two. What is really bad for Taiwan is
• 9:51
  that it worked very well as an electoral vote getter and
• 9:59
  somebody I tried to lobby in the DPP world actually put it to me
• 10:04
  once, she said, Angelica, you need to realize that anti
• 10:10
  nuclear activism came up hand in hand with the pro democracy
• 10:15
  movement in Taiwan. So you're never going to
• 10:19
  convince those people to be pro nuclear energy or even to accept
• 10:23
  nuclear energy, because for them it would mean giving up on their
• 10:27
  deepest values. Is that because it's a nuclear?
• 10:33
  The whole nuclear energy was put in place during the martial law
• 10:37
  during the Zhangjingguo era that when KMT rule Taiwan is that and
• 10:43
  and because DPP grow out of the kind of the opposition to KMT.
• 10:48
  So that's why they oppose whatever KMT did.
• 10:50
  Is that is that why they're anti nuclear?
• 10:53
  Yeah, I would say that's a big part of it.
• 10:56
  In in first of all, those nuclear power plants were big
• 10:59
  and very potent symbols of what the state, powerful and under
• 11:10
  unfree state, was able to do. And even though they produced a
• 11:15
  lot of economic output, nobody ever sought to get the consent
• 11:20
  of the people living near them or of Taiwan in general.
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  So it was a great way to hit the KMT government for not caring
• 11:32
  about the people, not caring about their health, only caring
• 11:34
  about profits, only caring about money.
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  And for a while I think. I think people forget now
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  because the current DPP is very much in the neoliberal middle
• 11:47
  now and very much like the like minded democracy playbook and it
• 11:55
  takes the achievements of TSMC as its own.
• 11:58
  But back then the DPP was actually kind of a leftist more
• 12:03
  left entity. And it was not just anti nuclear
• 12:06
  power. It was broadly, I would say
• 12:09
  almost anti development. So everything dovetailed with
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  their sort of NGO, human rights lawyer, anti development, anti
• 12:21
  nuclear, pro environment mindset.
• 12:24
  So they had a, well, I would, I would say anti business.
• 12:29
  They they had a more, they had a more, they had a vision of
• 12:33
  Taiwan. I would think that at one point
• 12:35
  seemed almost like, almost like agrarian or I don't know how to
• 12:40
  describe it, but it's it's, it's some it, you know, you see it in
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  the Western left to the pro environmentalist, anti big
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  business kind of leftism. So yeah, that they held on to
• 12:53
  that. And they still have, they still
• 12:56
  completely own the activist space, the NGO space.
• 13:00
  But obviously once they got into power, they realized, hey,
• 13:04
  economic growth is really nice, not just because it's now that
• 13:10
  we're in power, we are benefiting from it, but also
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  it's it's a vote getter. It's what you need to keep being
• 13:18
  elected. Now I I remember I first
• 13:23
  discover you on Twitter because you post a lot and I remember
• 13:27
  you used to be a quite vocal supporter of the DPP.
• 13:33
  But but there's recently there has been a big shift of your
• 13:38
  political stance. I mean, this is one of the
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  reason I invited you to the show to share with us your own
• 13:45
  political. I kind of, I kind of I'm too
• 13:47
  interested in your own political transformation.
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  How did you became from like a more pro DPP position now you
• 13:56
  now shifted to the other side but you you is it because mostly
• 14:02
  because of your pro nuclear activism?
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  I would say that sometimes your shift in beliefs can happen like
• 14:11
  a bankruptcy, right? It happened slowly, by slowly,
• 14:14
  and then all at once. And I feel like that's what
• 14:17
  happened. That's why everything seems so
• 14:19
  sudden and precipitous. Like, people are literally like
• 14:22
  Angelica, what happened to you? Are you OK?
• 14:26
  Are you manic? Do you need help?
• 14:29
  Are you, have you gone crazy? Have you cracked under the
• 14:32
  pressure of living in the most dangerous place in the world?
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  Have you Wait, wait, wait. Who, who, Who asked you if who,
• 14:42
  Who is said Taiwan is the most dangerous?
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  Oh, that, that was a that was a cover on the Economist a couple
• 14:48
  of days ago. So that's an Angel.
• 14:49
  But people really thought I was maybe cracking under the
• 14:52
  pressure of Taiwan being under the Chinese invasion threat.
• 14:57
  They also thought. Because I, I, I, my, I, I have.
• 15:02
  Maybe I should ask you, do people on Taiwan feel like they
• 15:06
  live in a very most dangerous place in the world?
• 15:10
  No, of course not. But I I will say this, people do
• 15:15
  hear the ticking of the reunification clock a lot louder
• 15:20
  than they used to when I got here in 2020.
• 15:23
  So it seemed like everything, the flipping name inside me
• 15:28
  happened. Seems like it all at once,
• 15:32
  right? And it was all this year.
• 15:35
  But quite frankly, my belief in the DPP and their version, not
• 15:41
  just of not just of human rights and democracy, but in terms of
• 15:48
  how viable they are at governance and how truthful they
• 15:53
  are when it comes to describing what's happening right now or in
• 15:57
  the past or how capable the policies are, that's been a
• 16:02
  gradual process of loss. And it started with me
• 16:05
  discovering that, yeah, I think they understand quite well
• 16:11
  they're not stupid. The situation with Taiwan's grid
• 16:15
  and our economic need for nuclear energy and why renewable
• 16:21
  energy is just never going to make it to the level they say
• 16:24
  they want it to go in Taiwan for various systematic, engineering
• 16:31
  related, economically related reasons, right?
• 16:34
  We are an island grid with poor renewable resources.
• 16:39
  And they, you know, President Lai, I'm so sorry, President
• 16:44
  Tai. This was during President Tai's
• 16:46
  second term when it was transparently obvious that her
• 16:50
  energy policy was a big fat fail.
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  She went on to declare that Taiwan is going to be net 0 by
• 16:59
  2050. I mean, I, I just felt like
• 17:03
  she's, she, I was so disappointed with her because
• 17:06
  when I first came back to Taiwan, this was remember when I
• 17:10
  was feeling really lost and not really knowing where my life is
• 17:14
  going to go and feeling really unconnected with Taiwan after
• 17:20
  being away on and off for so many years.
• 17:23
  I mean, I've worked in Taiwan before, so it's not totally
• 17:26
  formed, but I truly believe I would never live in Taiwan again
• 17:30
  as a full time resident. So I really, I really got a lot
• 17:35
  of comfort from the Taiwan aura up moment during the COVID.
• 17:42
  I don't know if you remember when we're doing a lot of cute
• 17:47
  things like, I don't know, exchanging care packages with
• 17:51
  Lithuania or having Czech politicians come to speak at our
• 17:55
  government about how great it is to stand up for democracy and
• 17:59
  how it's scary. But in the end, it's all worth
• 18:01
  it and that sort of thing. And I thought President Tsai
• 18:04
  herself was a very charming politician.
• 18:10
  I thought she was cool. I thought she was a girl boss.
• 18:15
  I also thought that she, she, she knew what she was doing Like
• 18:21
  the, she, she knew like she had a plan for where she was going
• 18:25
  with the country. And that that faith, that
• 18:30
  fandom, you know, I was a a Thai fan girl, really took a hit when
• 18:34
  I saw how disingenuous she was about the country's energy
• 18:38
  policy. And that really raised the
• 18:40
  question in my mind of how truthful she is, how capable she
• 18:45
  is about everything else. And it opened the door.
• 18:50
  Also because the pro nuclear activism world is full of KMT
• 18:56
  and TPP supporters. There is hardly any DPP in there
• 19:01
  at all. And if they are, they're
• 19:04
  probably not cases. Who wants Taiwan to get a bunch
• 19:07
  of nuclear weapons? Yes, though I I slowly by slowly
• 19:13
  by almost by osmosis, absorb the fact that the DPP is not a
• 19:20
  straight dealer when it comes to a lot of what they're saying
• 19:24
  either about our current situation or about our past, our
• 19:29
  history, and also about our military situation.
• 19:35
  So the military in Taiwan is actually still a very much KMT
• 19:42
  dominated institution. And this is something that the
• 19:45
  DPP can't do anything about. They can sort of parachute in a
• 19:49
  few guys at the top with their political affiliation, but the
• 19:53
  rank and file of the military tend to come from military
• 19:57
  families, and military families are the bluest of the blue and.
• 20:04
  Second, Angela, because most of my audience is the Anglophone
• 20:08
  audience, they need sometimes something to the basic, you
• 20:12
  know, we're, we're we're using this acronym DPPKMT.
• 20:16
  So KMT is a party that came with Shanghai shit from mainland
• 20:20
  after the civil war in 1949 and they had been ruling Taiwan as a
• 20:27
  military dictatorship until basically 1980s after you know I
• 20:32
  think when was a martial law lifted like 1987?
• 20:35
  Or something, something like that.
• 20:36
  Yeah, that. Time.
• 20:38
  So for a long time it was actually known as.
• 20:40
  Now it's known as white pair the, the period from 1947 to 19
• 20:45
  87 and and the, the, the, but the KMT they because they rule
• 20:52
  Taiwan with the iron hand. So they generate a lot of
• 20:54
  opposition. And well, KMT was very good at
• 20:58
  cracking down. That killed all the, the red
• 21:01
  opposition first that killed all the colonies.
• 21:03
  And then So what, what what was left is kind of the liberal
• 21:07
  opposition that was formed under the DPP and DPP, they
• 21:12
  eventually, after Taiwan liberalized and, and, and, and
• 21:16
  became a electoral democracy, eventually DPP will start
• 21:20
  winning election. And now, today, DPP have been
• 21:24
  the ruling party of Taiwan for almost like a decade now, right?
• 21:28
  Yeah, yeah. Taiwan got elected in 2016 and
• 21:32
  the DPP haven't lost the presidential election since,
• 21:36
  although the last one was definitely much closer.
• 21:40
  When President Lighting the was only elected with 40% of the
• 21:43
  vote. Because the KMT and a upstart
• 21:47
  party called the TPP Taiwan People's Party.
• 21:53
  They split the vote, the anti DPP vote.
• 21:56
  I think a lot of people are like me, you know, they started off
• 21:59
  being wanting to give the DPPA chance and they have become
• 22:04
  really disappointed with the poor governance.
• 22:07
  Meanwhile the KMT, they've been unable to defend themselves
• 22:13
  against the charges of despotism and anti being anti democracy.
• 22:22
  And it's because they wanted to tell the truth in a partial
• 22:27
  manner and they didn't want to tell the whole truth, which is
• 22:33
  that like you said before, a lot of the people they killed were
• 22:38
  not like Taiwanese separatists, pro democracy dissidents, right?
• 22:43
  They were commies and they wanted to separate the good
• 22:49
  victims. They want to atone sincerely for
• 22:53
  mind. Joe went to the 2 to 8 memorial
• 22:57
  every year and bawled his eyes out.
• 23:00
  But now to bring things like from the past right back to the
• 23:05
  bleeding edge of news. When the new KMT chairwoman,
• 23:10
  John Dee Wan, when she went to match hunting but were many of
• 23:15
  the victims of white terror were executed, she was criticized.
• 23:21
  She was criticized by the by the DPP and the KMT establishment
• 23:27
  alike. And the KMT establishment
• 23:31
  basically criticized her for affirming the Chinese Communist
• 23:40
  Party's version of history by mourning these commies who were
• 23:47
  rightfully shot and being disloyal to the memory of Chiang
• 23:51
  Kai Shek. Like they wanted to atone for
• 23:55
  the right kind of victims, not the wrong kind of victims.
• 23:58
  But the fact of the matter is the majority of the victims were
• 24:02
  the wrong kind of victims, right?
• 24:05
  Meanwhile the DPP who used to go to match hunting all the time
• 24:09
  lay flowers and counted the dead commies kind of as their own.
• 24:15
  They basically they basically scrubbed their ideology from the
• 24:20
  victims and made them out to be pro democracy, pro Taiwanese
• 24:25
  separatist victims. Proto Taiwan independence,
• 24:31
  maybe. But now all of a sudden they
• 24:35
  remember, oh, actually they were commies.
• 24:37
  It's very, very problematic for the KMT chairwoman to go there.
• 24:41
  So it's like, OK, they're the same, literally the same dead
• 24:44
  people. How can they be like prototydu
• 24:47
  martyrs for one occasion in the past when you wanted to
• 24:52
  politicize their their executions, and now they're a
• 24:56
  bunch of commies and the KMT chairwoman is capitulating to
• 25:02
  communism by going to commemorate their their
• 25:06
  executions. It's like, do they think that we
• 25:11
  have the memory of goldfish? Apparently they do that.
• 25:15
  Yeah, I think that's that's I see a lot of parallels actually
• 25:20
  between Taiwan and the develop the rest of the West, like
• 25:24
  particularly United States, you know, both are in the grip of
• 25:28
  the neo liberal ideology and both of them are developed into
• 25:35
  because they're mature economies now they are kind of facing all
• 25:39
  kind of bottleneck that that that that they're facing.
• 25:42
  All the problem with that come with neoliberal economics.
• 25:46
  All the wealth is now accrued to the top 1% and the people at the
• 25:52
  bottom. They have very dim economic
• 25:55
  prospect and then you have the then they just turn on the
• 25:59
  propaganda machine through the media to to to, you know, like
• 26:04
  you say, that's assume people have the memory of goldfish.
• 26:08
  Well, you know, I am actually, I actually started the Taipei
• 26:13
  Neolibs Club. You know, I, I was very
• 26:16
  associated with the online neoliberals.
• 26:19
  And for me, it's just what appears to accord with my
• 26:24
  perception of reality for basically my whole life, right.
• 26:28
  I grew up in the end of history moment.
• 26:32
  The world is flat made perfect sense coming collapse of China.
• 26:37
  I read that, you know, the year after it came out in, in 2002.
• 26:42
  And I, I think it, it just got to the point where I, I think
• 26:48
  the predictions were going in the wrong way and I saw the goal
• 26:52
  posts just getting constantly shifted.
• 26:55
  And that's actually my advice for people who are feeling
• 26:58
  really confused in this world. And maybe if you can feel your
• 27:02
  IQ dropping due to all the copium you're consuming, this is
• 27:08
  how you figure out who's telling the truth and who's dishing out
• 27:11
  the propaganda, right? Both sides uses propaganda.
• 27:14
  Of course they want to tell the story from their point of view.
• 27:17
  So for every 5 minutes you devote to the kind of media
• 27:22
  that's on your side, just give one minute to the others.
• 27:25
  And you don't have to take their word for anything.
• 27:28
  You just need to listen to them and kind of take a mental note
• 27:34
  of what they're predicting and just see which side is
• 27:39
  predicting the future better. I think that's a really, really
• 27:42
  good first step. And then also look for which
• 27:46
  side are presenting the arguments with more granularity
• 27:50
  and which side is kind of sliding more into black and
• 27:53
  white. You're either with us or against
• 27:56
  us or moral cudgels or kind of almost of a personal sanctions
• 28:02
  scheme where if you're saying the wrong things, the rest of
• 28:05
  your arguments are automatically invalid.
• 28:08
  If they're doing that, it's that's a side that's probably
• 28:12
  trying to propagandize you. Well, both sides are, but
• 28:15
  they're the one that needs more opium and copium in their
• 28:19
  narrative to make it stand up. Yeah, I think people just need
• 28:23
  to develop a better media literacy.
• 28:25
  And yet a lot of time you can still glean useful information
• 28:29
  from the media reports, but you just got to understand their
• 28:33
  angle. You know, you got to understand
• 28:35
  who is paying them, who is finding them, why there are, you
• 28:38
  know, you got to understand they have agenda, you know, Pew away
• 28:42
  at the agenda and to see what kind of useful information you
• 28:45
  can still gleam out. I'm really interested in how
• 28:49
  your, you know, like I said, I, I was interested in your
• 28:52
  political transformation because I noticed at one point you were
• 28:56
  posting an X. You are saying, OK, what, what
• 28:58
  is the DPP doing? Their anti nuclear stands is
• 29:03
  totally income. It's totally detrimental to the
• 29:06
  Taiwan's national security because Taiwan need the nuclear
• 29:10
  energy need to develop, you know, nuclear stockpile in order
• 29:16
  to defend itself against, you know, the imminent threat from
• 29:20
  mainland. But now you're taking a a much
• 29:22
  more nuanced view toward the cross trade relations.
• 29:25
  How did that come about? Well, I think the the DPP should
• 29:30
  keep the nuclear power plants on perspective to defend itself
• 29:35
  against the blockade or whatever.
• 29:36
  Perspective is very much actually the US standard line
• 29:40
  because they need Taiwan to at least, you know, not just flop
• 29:46
  over completely, right. That wouldn't, that wouldn't
• 29:49
  really serve their purposes. So I was pushing that point of
• 29:54
  view to try and move the DPP, and I know that their biggest
• 30:02
  sponsor was the Americans, so that seemed to be like the most
• 30:05
  effective way to do that. So a lot of it was just like
• 30:08
  lobbying, like trying to solve a problem of how to make the DPP
• 30:12
  do the right thing despite. Smart, actually.
• 30:16
  Having to take a political hit for that.
• 30:18
  But I think eventually I just realized actually talking to a
• 30:25
  lot of people who either are from military families or I have
• 30:31
  a military reporter friend. And it gradually again, it's
• 30:38
  like a sudden and then you get a light bulb moment.
• 30:41
  But you you don't get it because of the proximate piece of
• 30:45
  information you encounter before the light bulb moment.
• 30:48
  But because all of a sudden you gather enough information to see
• 30:53
  the the picture, see the whole picture.
• 30:56
  And I was like, Oh my God, there's no way.
• 31:01
  Like Taiwan back in the 90s, where Taiwan, if Taiwan wanted
• 31:07
  to declare independence, it we should have done it in the 90s
• 31:10
  because when we first democratized, I think we are
• 31:15
  about 150th or 160th of China's population, but we had like 40%
• 31:22
  of their GDP. Their military was completely
• 31:26
  useless and the United States could just completely obliterate
• 31:31
  them. And so that was the time, if the
• 31:35
  DPP was serious about Taiwanese independence, when they should
• 31:40
  have really pushed that agenda, right?
• 31:43
  Also, I think that would have been a great time for the KMT if
• 31:48
  they were serious, which they say they are about staying true
• 31:52
  to their Chinese roots to work out their differences with the
• 31:56
  Communist Party of China. Because that was the moment of
• 31:59
  maximum leverage and there was a lot on the table back then
• 32:05
  that's no longer on the table right now.
• 32:07
  That would have kept a lot more of Taiwan's autonomy, would have
• 32:12
  guaranteed a lot more of Taiwan's democracy remaining,
• 32:17
  preserved Taiwan's rights of free speech.
• 32:21
  Those things were not just on the table then.
• 32:23
  They were eagerly offered up by the other side in an attempt to
• 32:27
  court Taiwan into reunification. It would have meant so much for
• 32:33
  China back then in terms of everything that Taiwan had to
• 32:38
  offer. We ended up offering it in a
• 32:40
  back channel way anyhow because as trade and the economy started
• 32:44
  moving cross straits, even as politically we remain at odds,
• 32:50
  we begin like trading like crazy and we're we were often the
• 32:55
  preferred middle partner between American companies and Taiwanese
• 33:00
  and Chinese manufacturers in between.
• 33:02
  You need the Taiwanese layer of contract manufacturers.
• 33:07
  The crudest way I've heard this said by an American business
• 33:12
  person is we like it when we tell the Taiwanese what to do
• 33:16
  and the Taiwanese tell the Chinese what to do, and so
• 33:20
  Taiwan, that's a. That's a, that's a Foxconn
• 33:23
  model, right? That's basically a Foxconn.
• 33:25
  Model that was a Foxconn model and for years Taiwan got rich
• 33:30
  off that, but not as not in relative terms.
• 33:34
  China was starting from such a low base and growing so quickly
• 33:37
  that relatively power switched. The relative balance of power
• 33:42
  switch very quickly between the Taiwan Straits and the Taiwanese
• 33:46
  were no longer able to be a hard target for the Chinese anymore.
• 33:52
  I think Rand Corporation basically said in 2006 in a
• 33:58
  paper that according to their war games, they can't be
• 34:01
  convinced that America can actually, even if it's trying,
• 34:08
  can, can actually protect Taiwan in a cross Strait contingency,
• 34:12
  right. And eventually the Taiwanese
• 34:16
  layer in the middle, we were surprised Pikachu face.
• 34:20
  We were replaced and we thought it would could never happen to
• 34:24
  us, but it did. Now it's happening to the
• 34:27
  Americans. They realize, Oh my God, I
• 34:31
  thought the Chinese would always need somebody in Cupertino to
• 34:35
  design phones, and it turns out they don't.
• 34:38
  So now they're panicking. So we panic first.
• 34:42
  Now they're panicking. And the whole situation is one
• 34:46
  that could have been resolved in a more considered from a
• 34:54
  position of advantage with dignity on both sides.
• 34:59
  I feel like is now descending quickly into a game of
• 35:05
  scrambling when people realize all at once that's something
• 35:09
  that they thought was impossible is already happening.
• 35:14
  And now how do we resolve the situation?
• 35:18
  Yeah. I I'm I totally agree with you.
• 35:20
  Taiwan had a like opportunity of a lifetime during during the 90s
• 35:25
  to have a very a settled a, a settlement that's much to
• 35:31
  Taiwan's favor. But but at at that that moment,
• 35:34
  you have to remember in the 90s or even up to early 2000, this
• 35:39
  was the time of end of history. This is the time of the.
• 35:43
  End of history. And this was the time of Gordon
• 35:46
  Chan's coming class of China. So a lot of people did believe,
• 35:50
  I, I believe even the Taiwan top leadership believe that they
• 35:54
  just have to wait China out because there's coming class
• 35:56
  with China. We can, we can just wait them
• 35:59
  out. And, and so I think that's why
• 36:01
  they lost that opportunity. This is my my opinion.
• 36:05
  I, I think so. And I think status quo forever
• 36:10
  became the default belief of most Taiwanese because you have
• 36:16
  to understand they live their whole lifetime under the threat
• 36:19
  of Chinese invasion and it never happens.
• 36:22
  Like after a while you just become numb to it and you don't
• 36:29
  really think rationally about why it didn't happen in the past
• 36:35
  and what condition might have changed that might cause it to
• 36:38
  happen in the future. And I do notice this phenomenon
• 36:42
  that's really, really, really interesting and weirdly
• 36:47
  universal is people who make bad geopolitical calls often end up
• 36:54
  losing also their ability to self correct and they double
• 36:59
  down on the bad decision over and over again because almost as
• 37:03
  if facing up to it is too painful.
• 37:07
  And I think the bad decision in Taiwan's part is thinking that
• 37:12
  America will remain stronger than China forever, and thus
• 37:17
  Taiwan could enjoy status quo forever, kind of balancing
• 37:22
  between China and the United States and getting benefits from
• 37:26
  both sides. The way the metaphor I like to
• 37:29
  use is we are a little dinghy, like a little lifeboat, and
• 37:35
  we're attached to a much bigger mother ship that was the US.
• 37:39
  And we could rest on that dinghy and just kind of ignore like
• 37:43
  where it is we have to go because it it felt like it it
• 37:49
  was secure enough. And now we're at a moment in
• 37:52
  history where the cord has been cut.
• 37:56
  We are no longer attached to the United States mothership. the
• 37:59
  United States mothership is actually fighting for its own
• 38:02
  survival right now. So they don't have time to take
• 38:05
  care of us. And in that position, it's a lot
• 38:09
  different to argue for status quo forever.
• 38:13
  It doesn't mean you have to jump out of the lifeboat.
• 38:15
  I'm not advocating for reunification tomorrow.
• 38:18
  I'm not waving a red flag. And saying Long live the
• 38:23
  Communist Party of China. I'm not.
• 38:26
  I'm saying we are now in a situation where we are a
• 38:31
  lifeboat that's looking for land, looking for safety.
• 38:36
  And that has to happen now. There is no status quo anymore.
• 38:40
  For me, actually, I think what we're in now is a different
• 38:45
  phase of history. You.
• 38:46
  You have a very sensible position, but I'm sure your
• 38:51
  shift, your political shift has created a lot of shock and
• 38:55
  concern nation among, you know, your former associates, you
• 38:58
  know, did they did you get a lot of pushback and like Angelo
• 39:03
  Angelica, what are you doing? You know, why, why are you being
• 39:05
  a apologist for the CCP now? Why, why, why are you betraying
• 39:11
  the the cause of Taiwan? Did that happen?
• 39:15
  An insane amount of that happened.
• 39:17
  I was totally unprepared for what was about to happen when I
• 39:22
  came out. As a pragmatist on this issue,
• 39:27
  you have to understand this is not my first rodeo.
• 39:29
  I've I've kind of changed my mind a lot about a lot of things
• 39:33
  throughout my life. And I felt like I had to do that
• 39:35
  because I literally grew up between different cultures with
• 39:40
  different conflicting ideas of what's right and wrong, and
• 39:46
  they're constantly deluded into thinking that that is a
• 39:50
  universal and only right way to do things right.
• 39:54
  So you cannot have the ability to move in, move in and out of
• 39:58
  these cultures and truly be connected to them without also
• 40:05
  having the ability to make up your mind and change it once in
• 40:09
  a while. So I changed my mind, by the
• 40:13
  way, from offshore wind, being supporter of offshore wind, in
• 40:18
  fact, having that be my livelihood.
• 40:22
  And when I switched to the pro nuclear side, I had to bite the
• 40:26
  hand that fed me. And I had to basically, yeah, I,
• 40:33
  I backstabbed the offshore wind industry in the eyes of the
• 40:35
  offshore wind industry. But I thought I did it
• 40:38
  gracefully. I thought I did it with a lot of
• 40:41
  space for acknowledging people's hard work.
• 40:44
  And I did it with careful attention to say that no
• 40:50
  technology is good or bad. It's just suitable or
• 40:52
  unsuitable. And this is what went wrong in
• 40:55
  Taiwan's case. Not that offshore wind shouldn't
• 40:59
  exist in Taiwan, but it that it should be done better.
• 41:01
  And we shouldn't be so reliant on it because you literally
• 41:07
  don't know when the wind it's going to be blowing.
• 41:10
  So I did that, and I thought I did that really gracefully.
• 41:15
  There was, of course, there was always blowback, but I handle it
• 41:22
  no problem. And I thought I acquitted myself
• 41:25
  really well. I managed to keep a lot of my
• 41:27
  friends who were less ideological about their
• 41:31
  professions. So I thought, well, the same
• 41:34
  thing is going to happen, right? I'm just, I'm just updating a
• 41:37
  few priors, duh. The world's been changing.
• 41:39
  Haven't you noticed the Trump tariffs?
• 41:41
  I mean, I, in my mind, I, I thought my moves like every step
• 41:45
  of the way was perfectly reasonable.
• 41:49
  But it turned out there's a red line.
• 41:51
  And when you start saying nice things about China, you've
• 41:55
  crossed it. Like, you can acknowledge
• 41:56
  China's progress. You can acknowledge even how
• 42:01
  precarious Taiwan's position is, as long as you always couch it
• 42:07
  in terms of this is a terrible thing and we must remedy it.
• 42:13
  And we can remedy it. As soon as you start to
• 42:16
  acknowledge that maybe the gaps gotten too big to remedy, or if
• 42:22
  you even go further than that and say, wow, China's really
• 42:27
  impressive. They they've done some great
• 42:28
  things. And in the long run,
• 42:31
  reunification between China and Taiwan in a form that if we get
• 42:38
  good terms and get to actually negotiate terms, that allows us
• 42:44
  to keep the way of life that we're used to, it might not be a
• 42:48
  terrible thing. It's certainly a much better
• 42:50
  position than Ukraine found itself in, or even further than
• 42:55
  that. China could have turned Taiwan
• 43:00
  into an ashtray probably anytime after 2006, and the United
• 43:06
  States would have had limited means to do anything about it.
• 43:09
  But they didn't, because they don't want war, They still see
• 43:13
  us as their compatriots, and they really don't want a forced
• 43:20
  reunification. And that requires us, in order
• 43:25
  to keep the peace, to actually also reach out with goodwill and
• 43:32
  address their concerns. And if both sides kind of put
• 43:36
  their cards on the table, then we can settle it on the
• 43:39
  negotiation table and not on the battlefield.
• 43:45
  That is a very pragmatic position.
• 43:47
  And I, you know, before I only know, you know, another
• 43:51
  Taiwanese person, Shanghi, who I'm sure you know.
• 43:55
  Yeah. And I thought he was kind of the
• 43:57
  lone voice in the woods talking about having a better maintain a
• 44:03
  better relationship with mainly China and and being pro
• 44:05
  unification. But I did notice now now you are
• 44:08
  not alone. I mean, I there's a famous
• 44:10
  Taiwanese influencer, the gym boss who recently switched his
• 44:14
  position on the issue of cross Strait relationship and
• 44:20
  unification. Because I remember watching gym
• 44:22
  boss rant couple years back, I think during COVID time.
• 44:27
  And he was, he was saying, oh, yeah, like if the communists
• 44:31
  come here, we'll fight them on the beach, We'll fight them in
• 44:34
  the streets. We got guns, man.
• 44:37
  We got tons of guns. And and guess what?
• 44:39
  The Taiwanese youth today, they have nothing.
• 44:42
  They have nothing already. They have they, they they don't
• 44:44
  have a good job prospect. They can't afford the expensive
• 44:47
  housing. The only thing we have left is
• 44:50
  the ability to ship post online. And if you communists to take
• 44:54
  even that from us, we will fight you to the death.
• 44:57
  And I saw that and I'm like, wow, that guy is so close.
• 45:02
  He's so close and and. Then and then a few year and
• 45:06
  like a couple years later, he suddenly flipped and he he's now
• 45:11
  like touring the mainland and, and, and telling his followers
• 45:15
  how great, you know, how impressive the mainland China
• 45:18
  infrastructure is. Do you think that there's a
• 45:21
  larger shift going on? I mean, absolutely.
• 45:25
  Absolutely. My change did not happen in a
• 45:28
  vacuum. I like to tell my Twitter
• 45:30
  followers sometimes it's not that Angelica just suddenly
• 45:33
  decided freedom and democracy is bad.
• 45:37
  I am the the Canary on your Twitter timeline telling of a
• 45:43
  greater political change that's happened in is happening at
• 45:48
  rapid speed in Taiwan. And the change is happening
• 45:53
  again because of wider global changes that we've seen that's
• 46:00
  happened in the past few years very, very quickly.
• 46:03
  In a way, if Ukraine is the physical battlefield where the
• 46:12
  West is testing itself against the rest, Taiwan is the
• 46:16
  invisible ideological battlefield where the same thing
• 46:22
  is happening. Three factors, the rise of
• 46:27
  China, the banditization of America, and Taiwan's own
• 46:37
  stagnation. I think those are the three
• 46:39
  factors that is causing this political earthquake that we are
• 46:46
  still convulsing through right now.
• 46:49
  Outsiders don't see it because they stick to the English
• 46:53
  language media, and the English language media is completely
• 46:59
  aligned with the DPP view of events.
• 47:01
  So it's always oh why it's KMT being so awful.
• 47:05
  Look, there are protesters on the street because the KMT is
• 47:09
  being so awful and they'll never get the full story from the
• 47:15
  other side because they'll simply delete it before they
• 47:20
  even read it, if they get to read it, if it's written about,
• 47:24
  which it isn't in the western press.
• 47:27
  And then they're really surprised when things don't line
• 47:29
  up with their expectations. Don't take it out on me.
• 47:32
  This is like all of Taiwan. Or if not all of Taiwan, I would
• 47:37
  say a lot of the the middle voter who used to be more
• 47:43
  sympathetic to the DPP and pro status quo forever.
• 47:49
  A lot of them as suddenly remembering, Gee, we're Chinese
• 47:53
  or China's actually not doing so bad.
• 47:54
  And especially the Gen. Z's.
• 47:57
  They grew up never experiencing the Cold War mentality.
• 48:03
  They grew up when China was already like, not doing bad
• 48:08
  economically and rising quickly in, in, in terms of the economy
• 48:14
  and in the age of unprecedented, I'll say relative lack of
• 48:22
  opportunity in Taiwan because you have to understand, wages
• 48:26
  have been stagnant for decades here, but housing prices go up
• 48:32
  every year. Before I was born, my mom was a
• 48:37
  real estate agent. And the real estate boom in the
• 48:41
  80s was so potent that she sold houses out of the apartment
• 48:48
  project before they were even complete, right?
• 48:51
  She'll just point, she'll just point at a model of what this
• 48:56
  project's going to look like. And she'll take people into a
• 49:00
  model of the apartment and say, this is what your apartment will
• 49:04
  look like. And people bought off the back
• 49:07
  of that because they were so eager after they were built
• 49:14
  their own factory, got their own, got their first bucket of
• 49:18
  gold. As we say in Chinese, when you
• 49:21
  get your first bucket of gold, you know what Chinese people
• 49:23
  like to do? They like to buy their first
• 49:25
  piece of real estate and then they like to buy more and then
• 49:29
  they go up in value. So they keep buying more and
• 49:31
  more and more and more. And this is so fantastic.
• 49:35
  Good for you if you were doing that in the 80s, nineties, the
• 49:41
  naughties, whatever it it just keeps going up, right?
• 49:44
  You, you, you pay more and more for it, but then it it you
• 49:48
  always end up the winter. It's like a casino where it's
• 49:51
  just like, let me keep betting on black because it's always
• 49:54
  coming up black. But it's not so good if you're a
• 49:59
  young person and you graduate into a stagnant wage environment
• 50:06
  and then you realize, damn it, there's no way I can afford to
• 50:11
  buy an apartment. I'm going to have to live with
• 50:13
  my parents forever. People put off major life
• 50:16
  decisions, marriage. People don't dare have kids
• 50:20
  unless they feel like they can put a roof over their own heads.
• 50:24
  So you have a generation that sees the rise of China and look
• 50:29
  back at Taiwan and see not the thriving rainbow boba democracy
• 50:39
  world beating TSMC state that everybody else sees.
• 50:42
  They see like no hope, no hope for the future, no hope of ever
• 50:47
  getting on their feet be independent.
• 50:50
  And even if their mom bought them their first apartment or
• 50:54
  whatever like that, they they never feel like they can truly
• 50:58
  be their own person. They feel like their future is
• 51:04
  like that. Imagine that the ceiling slowly
• 51:08
  lowering on their on Taiwanese potential generation after
• 51:14
  generation as housing prices get higher and higher.
• 51:18
  I've heard somebody describe rising real estate prices as a
• 51:22
  tax on future generations, and I think that's very apartment,
• 51:25
  yeah. I, I see so much parallels
• 51:30
  between Taiwan and the West, in particular United States.
• 51:34
  I mean, like the Gen. Z in US is facing the same bleak
• 51:39
  economic future, the same rising housing prices and, and same
• 51:45
  anemic job, job market. And, you know, because both of
• 51:49
  these places are practicing liberal neoliberal economics.
• 51:54
  But the, the, the, the, what I see in United States, though, is
• 51:57
  like the US voters are so demoralized, you know, have
• 52:00
  there been cheated by their politicians who promised change,
• 52:05
  you know, first Obama and then then Trump.
• 52:09
  Do you think, do you think it would turn out different for
• 52:11
  Taiwan? Do you think that there will be
• 52:13
  actually lead to political change in Taiwan?
• 52:16
  I think it already has. I really want to mention the how
• 52:22
  extraordinary it is that the KMT elected somebody like John Lewan
• 52:31
  to be their leader because she's actually somebody who's
• 52:36
  determined to get cross Strait peace done.
• 52:39
  And she will say things like, I aim to extend peace between the
• 52:48
  two sides of the Taiwan Strait. And the first step to doing that
• 52:50
  is resolving the past conflict between the Nationalists and the
• 52:58
  Communists. And that doesn't sound like
• 53:02
  much, but it cuts to the truth, right?
• 53:06
  We were two sides of the civil war.
• 53:08
  We, the Republic of China, was the losing side of a civil war.
• 53:14
  And the reason why we were able to survive until now is US
• 53:19
  support, right? And the US supported us not out
• 53:24
  of the goodness of their own hearts, but because we are a
• 53:28
  valuable geopolitical Borg, kind of a little thorn in China's
• 53:33
  side that they can push or withdraw as it befitted the rest
• 53:40
  of their plans geopolitically. Actually, I think the older
• 53:45
  generation of KMT have more realism about that part that we
• 53:49
  are a part of their battleship system because they know that
• 53:56
  they know how we were choked back.
• 53:57
  I, I think at one point Chiang Kai Shek was getting quite
• 54:01
  adventuresome and a lot of a lot of all that white terrorist
• 54:07
  stuff. It's just your typical Cold War
• 54:10
  fascist versus communism stuff, right?
• 54:13
  And not only did the, the US, no, not only did the US, they
• 54:22
  initially wanted to just abandoned Taiwan, but I think
• 54:25
  they realized that Korea did so badly that they needed another
• 54:29
  check on China. So they scurried back and and
• 54:35
  defended us. It was a a process of of
• 54:37
  repeated and kind of undignified abandonment and rescue, right?
• 54:48
  I think I'm reading a book right now called Derecognition, and
• 54:52
  it's written by the plucky head of the American Chamber of
• 54:57
  Commerce at the time when derecognition happened under
• 55:00
  Carter. And I think people forget that
• 55:03
  when Carter derecognized Taiwan, he very much assumed the people
• 55:08
  in his administration and in general very much assume that
• 55:12
  would be the end of free China. You have the pathetic history of
• 55:20
  Taiwanese people flagging down random American businessmen in
• 55:24
  the streets of Taipei asking for assurances.
• 55:28
  We are not really abandoned, are we?
• 55:32
  And the the blow of the recognition was softened by the
• 55:38
  Taiwan Relations Act that was very much lobbied by this head
• 55:43
  of M Cham at the time. And he made a real difference
• 55:48
  in, in pushing for it. Maybe.
• 55:50
  I mean, that's his book, so his point of view, But but you see a
• 55:54
  lot of a lot of uncertainty in there.
• 55:59
  I guess that's the beginning of strategic ambiguity, right?
• 56:02
  But so the the old school KMT remember the betrayals of the
• 56:06
  past, but the DVP in a way they they don't.
• 56:10
  Maybe their top level leadership does, they realize the game
• 56:14
  that's being played. But their rank and file
• 56:16
  believers are naive. They've never lived through
• 56:21
  derecognition. They never lived through as a
• 56:24
  KMT did, like our nuclear weapons program being taken away
• 56:30
  from us by the Americans. The KMT experienced all those
• 56:34
  things as betrayals. But for the DPT, you know, they
• 56:40
  didn't even exist or they were too busy fighting the KMT.
• 56:45
  Oh, by the way, interesting. Fun fact, a lot of the founders
• 56:47
  of the DPP were actually communist synthesizers and they
• 56:52
  only got like kicked out of the DPP later when they decided that
• 56:57
  Taiwanese independence was going to be their big thing.
• 57:01
  Yeah, well, this has to be a fascinating, fascinating
• 57:06
  conversation. And I, I, I, I hope to have you
• 57:09
  back because this is still an ongoing story.
• 57:13
  And, and you know, like there's a lot of eyes right now focus on
• 57:17
  Taiwan and there's a lot of misunderstanding.
• 57:19
  You know, you have all these BBC alarming articles about Taiwan
• 57:24
  being the most dangerous place on the world.
• 57:26
  I think that. Was the Economist like 3 years
• 57:29
  ago? But yeah, that's the tenor.
• 57:31
  That's the tenor of the reporting and that's the level
• 57:34
  of the reporting. And actually, I, I see it as
• 57:37
  kind of a tentative good sign that the number of news articles
• 57:41
  written about Taiwan has fallen off markedly since the COVID
• 57:45
  peak. I think that was the peak of
• 57:46
  Taiwan, the most dangerous place in the world hysteria.
• 57:50
  I think actually the the reunification threat, the arm,
• 57:58
  the sort of forced reunification threat has only increased on
• 58:03
  China's side as they become more confident in themselves.
• 58:08
  They face the US down in a tariff war and they really
• 58:16
  powered up their military so much that we can see in in
• 58:20
  recent events, not that they fought in any wars, but they
• 58:24
  were there were there were there are signs that their military is
• 58:28
  getting so powerful that the United States probably wouldn't
• 58:32
  be wise to try and confront them in their own front yard.
• 58:36
  So yeah, definitely keep an eye out.
• 58:40
  I would really encourage people to keep an eye eye out on Jadi
• 58:45
  one and the discourse around her.
• 58:48
  To me, she and Jim Boss are two people that might have changed
• 58:53
  the course of the whole conversation that we're having.
• 58:57
  It's it's always a question, right?
• 58:59
  Do people like that arrive because the pressure in history
• 59:04
  reached a certain level or do they shape history?
• 59:08
  I don't know, but I think they definitely shape short term
• 59:11
  history. I don't know if long term, like
• 59:14
  history was always going to go in one way or another.
• 59:16
  I prefer to think that we have the ability to shape history.
• 59:20
  I believe that the World War One wasn't inevitable.
• 59:23
  World War 2 wasn't inevitable. The war in Ukraine was not
• 59:28
  inevitable, but it is very, very hard when you have those
• 59:33
  historical forces moving in a certain way to be wise enough to
• 59:39
  avoid war. And it takes work and it takes
• 59:43
  to to dissolve historical grudges that are aged decades in
• 59:47
  the making It it requires a certain kind of ability to rise
• 59:53
  above, right. Otherwise you're always stuck.
• 59:56
  You're always stuck in the conflicts of the past.
• 59:59
  But. If Taiwan can do it, it will be
• 1:00:04
  pretty amazing. It's pretty much the equivalent
• 1:00:06
  of hitting the geopolitical jackpot.
• 1:00:09
  Imagine being like America's ally, loyal little brother in
• 1:00:14
  the Pacific for 8 decades, right?
• 1:00:17
  We benefited a lot from that. We got rich from that early.
• 1:00:22
  And then in 2025 to 2035 or whatever we're calling this
• 1:00:28
  period, if we can slowly, safely and in a way that doesn't
• 1:00:34
  compromise our core values, what we seek out of life.
• 1:00:41
  If we can instead join to become not just a part of Team China,
• 1:00:46
  but a part of China itself as it rises to become the richest,
• 1:00:51
  most powerful geopolitical actor, not just in this region,
• 1:00:55
  but perhaps even in the world. That's like Yahtzee.
• 1:00:59
  That's like definitely. I mean, to put it in very
• 1:01:03
  mercenary terms, that's, that's, that's not something to mourn.
• 1:01:09
  It's something to celebrate. Unfortunately, it's also very,
• 1:01:13
  very hard. And I think there are forces
• 1:01:16
  working in both directions on this island right now, which is
• 1:01:19
  why it's so chaotic. But nobody's talking about it.
• 1:01:22
  Well, that's why we're going to have you back.
• 1:01:25
  This is. Fascinating, fascinating
• 1:01:27
  conversation. I'm glad I had you on the show.
• 1:01:31
  It's always refreshing to have to talk with the intelligent
• 1:01:34
  person from a perspective of Taiwan, you know, rather than
• 1:01:39
  having some white people talking about Taiwan.
• 1:01:42
  That's the most dangerous place. So thank you very much again,
• 1:01:45
  Angela, if people want to follow you on social media or
• 1:01:49
  elsewhere, where would they go? Well on Twitter you can just
• 1:01:54
  follow me at Angelica own. I would highly recommend doing a
• 1:01:57
  web search for typology, TAIPOLOGY and either on YouTube
• 1:02:06
  or on Google. You'll probably come up on my
• 1:02:09
  sub stack or my new YouTube channel.
• 1:02:12
  Eventually I hope to turn the content of my YouTube channel
• 1:02:16
  into a podcast too, like on Apple and whatever.
• 1:02:20
  Maybe Carl can give me some tips on that?
• 1:02:22
  What is the name of your YouTube channel?
• 1:02:25
  Just typology. Typology.
• 1:02:27
  Yeah, type it in typology. Like typology?
• 1:02:30
  As in, like Taipei apology. Yeah, just TAIPOLGY, I'll.
• 1:02:35
  Put the I'll put the links and description in the description
• 1:02:38
  below. Links to your Twitter page, your
• 1:02:40
  sub stack and your YouTube. So for people that wish to
• 1:02:44
  follow Angela, make sure to check those links.
• 1:02:47
  She has very interesting insight on Taiwan and this relationship
• 1:02:52
  with China and United States. Highly, highly recommend.
• 1:02:56
  Thank you very much for making the time to speak with us and I
• 1:02:59
  would definitely looking forward to our next conversation.
• 1:03:03
  No problem, it's been a pleasure and I can honestly say I never
• 1:03:06
  thought I'd be in the situation, but here we are.
• 1:03:11
  Yeah, it's well, I I think on on that note, thank you for tuning
• 1:03:16
  in everybody. Until next time, bye bye.
• 1:03:19
  Bye bye.