Xinjiang is prototype for fully totalitarian state: Taiwan minister
This article notes that Tang is a digital minister and has experience with information technology. My impression is that Taiwan has a very healthy and balanced demographic of politicians. I have seen Taiwanese mathematicians, doctors, engineers, and chemists fill important government roles involving the spotlight and advocacy. It seems that people of technical expertise in Taiwan have an equally viable chance at entering politics and policy-making.<p>This is not to say that scientists, engineers, or doctors make for better policymakers. Perhaps there is a case to be made that career politicians have skillsets that validate the need to specialize in politics. However, the stereotype of career politicians is that of ignorance with no understanding of subject matter for the things that they make policies for. This impression was cemented further after the hearing between Zuckerberg and Congress about Facebook. This video even plays it for laughs: &quot;Zuckerberg explains the internet to Congress&quot;, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ncbb5B85sd0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ncbb5B85sd0</a>. For the government to help its people, it needs to incentivize diversity within its ranks so that it can understand the variety of issues that it faces. It also needs to be able to adapt to changing realities.<p>Regarding what Tang talks about: I frequently think that what is happening over there are the emulations of unethical experiments (I hear the TV show Black Mirror is similar) that the Western world would never be able to pull off. Regardless of where one stands on this issue, I do not think it can be denied that a lot can be learned about how these systems operate at scale or how the machine runs. From the reports and stories that we get to hear about, it seems like the Chinese government is implementing technology at scales that most countries could ever dream of doing.<p>Or rather, most countries could only dream of creating technological systems of control with the degree of acceptance by the populace, with degree of penetration and overall dissemination. Western governments have implemented comparable systems, like the ones that Edward Snowden pointed out. However, if governments did not worry about hiding questionable activity, maybe it could double down on the level of sophistication and expand on its capabilities.