Chiang Min-yen of the Taiwan Economic Democracy Union accepted the Freedom House Beacon Award for democracy on behalf of Taiwan's civil society. Chiang says civil society is key to Taiwan's democratic resilience, noting that it can work with and also act as a check on the government.
00:00So Freedom House just gave its very first Beacon Award for Democracy to Taiwan.
00:05What does it mean that Freedom House is not only recognizing Taiwan's government, but also Taiwan's civil society with this honor?
00:12I think for Freedom House, they value the Taiwanese democracy and they want to emphasize that
00:23Taiwanese people are trying to sustain their own democracy even though we are living under a military threat from the biggest authoritarian countries in the world.
00:35For Freedom House, they are also recognizing that Taiwanese civil society is an indepensable political force in Taiwan's democracy.
00:46And it sometimes works with the Taiwanese government. Sometimes it works independently from the Taiwanese government.
00:56And that is the very reason why we can keep our democracy vibrant in the current time.
01:02So you were the representative of civil society accepting that award on Tuesday night.
01:08What was it like for you to represent not only your organization, the Economic Democracy Union,
01:14but also the rest of Taiwan's civil society?
01:17For Taiwanese people, we pursue democracy over a century.
01:21And we pursue democracy and we form our own national security.
01:30And we practice democracy in our own land through elections, through social movements.
01:39For Taiwanese people, I think civil society is a key force for us to nurture the capable political party and to hold our political systems and politicians accountable.
01:55And this is one of the reasons why Taiwan's democracy can remain vibrant.
02:02Because there is always a political force called Taiwan civil society.
02:09And it continues to play a role in this system.
02:17In naming Taiwan in this honor, Freedom House acknowledged that Taiwan faces threats to its democracy, especially from China.
02:25Could you talk a bit more about the threats that Taiwan's democracy faces both internally and externally?
02:31Our democracy is very young.
02:33Our democracy is very young.
02:34And it has been only three decades since the end of the martial rule.
02:45So for Taiwanese people, we are still trying to consolidate the democratic systems into our daily life.
02:58But somehow it will become vulnerable towards the Chinese infiltration.
03:04For example, the Chinese sharp power, they will undermine our media environment.
03:12And Chinese government, they feed the disinformation campaign to our democracy.
03:20We are also facing a lot of great zone tactics from China.
03:25For example, recently there are lots of submarine cables were cut off by some suspicious entities with the connection with CCP regime.
03:38But for Taiwan compared to China, which is the biggest esoteric regime in the world now.
03:45So it will be very challenging for Taiwan to defend ourselves without other assistance from the democratic alliance.
03:58However, we have to show our steadfast determination to defend ourselves.
04:07Only with this determination, we can convince our friends from the international community to work with us.
