(2017-04-19) She's Young, Transgender, And An Anarchist And Is Leading Taiwan's Drive To Become A Digital Powerhouse

She's young, transgender and an anarchist, and is leading Taiwan's drive to become a digital powerhouse. At 14, she (Audrey Tang) dropped out of school to start a search-engine company. At 19, she had left Taiwan to work as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Now, at 36, she is Taiwan’s youngest government minister, charged with jump-starting the island’s stagnating, $130-billion high-tech sector. She is also Taiwan’s first transgender Cabinet minister and, perhaps most remarkable, the only one who describes herself as an anarchist.

“It’s no longer the old way where the government predicts what happens over the next eight years and then subsidizes or reimburses the private sector to develop exactly that,” Tang said. “We’ve stopped playing prophets and just said … everybody’s in, we welcome everyone’s input.”

She envisions an Internet platform on which the island’s 430,000 start-ups can exchange resources for free.

As an anarchist, Tang advocates “no hierarchical or bureaucratic relationships among people.” Her staff of 15 all volunteered to work with her. They’re free to change government departments if they “get fed up with me,” Tang said, though no one has. They produce weekly “road maps” as collaborators rather than as boss and employees

“My concept for the economy is one of abundance,” Tang said. “I’m aware of course there are scarce resources around the world, especially cognitive resources, but now that’s changing.”