2-2-the-life-of-a-digital-democracy2-2-数字民主的历程

The Life of a Digital Democracy

数字民主的生存状态

When we see "internet of things,"
let's make it an internet of beings.
When we see "virtual reality,"
let's make it a shared reality.
When we see "machine learning,"
let's make it collaborative learning.
When we see "user experience,"
let's make it about human experience.
When we hear “the singularity is near” —
let us remember: The Plurality is here.

当我们看到“物联网”时，让我们把它变成“万物互联”；当我们看到“虚拟现实”时，让我们把它变成“共享现实”；当我们看到“机器学习”时，让我们把它变成“协作学习”；当我们看到“用户体验”时，让我们关注“人性化体验”；当我们听到“奇点临近”时——让我们记住：‘多元共存’就在当下。

— Audrey Tang, Job Description, 2016

——唐凤，职位描述，2016

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Without living in Taiwan and experiencing it regularly, it is hard to grasp what such an achievement means, and for those living there continuously many of these features are taken for granted. Thus we aim here to provide concrete illustrations and quantitative analyses of what distinguishes Taiwan's digital civic infrastructure from those of most of the rest of the world. Because there are far too many examples to discuss in detail, we have selected six diverse illustrations that roughly cover a primary focal project for each two-year period since 2012; after we briefly list a wide range of other programs.

如果没有在台湾生活并经常体验，就很难理解这样的成就意味着什么；而对于长期居住在那里的人来说，许多这些功能都被视为理所当然。因此，我们旨在通过具体的实例和定量分析来阐述台湾数字公民基础设施与世界其他大多数地区的不同之处。由于需要详细讨论的例子太多，我们选择了六个不同的例子，大致涵盖了自2012年以来每两年一个主要重点项目；之后，我们简要列举了一系列其他项目。

Illustrations

实例

g0v

g0v

More than any other institution, g0v (pronounced gov-zero) symbolizes the civil-society foundation of digital democracy in Taiwan. Founded in 2012 by civic hackers including Kao Chia-liang, g0v arose from discontent with the quality of government digital services and data transparency.[^g0vManifesto] Civic hackers began to scrape government websites (usually with the suffix gov.tw) and build alternative formats for data display and interaction for the same website, hosting them at g0v.tw. These "forked" versions of government websites often ended up being more popular, leading some government ministers, like Simon Chang to begin "merging" these designs back into government services.

g0v（发音为gov-zero）比任何其他机构都更能象征台湾数字民主的公民社会基础。它由包括高嘉良在内的公民黑客于2012年创立，源于对政府数字服务质量和数据透明度的失望。[^g0vManifesto]公民黑客开始抓取政府网站（通常以gov.tw结尾）的数据，并为同一个网站构建替代的数据显示和交互格式，并将它们托管在g0v.tw上。这些政府网站的“分支”版本往往更受欢迎，导致一些政府部长，例如张善政，开始将这些设计“合并”回政府服务中。

[^g0vManifesto]: g0v Manifesto defines it as "a non-partisan, not-for-profit, grassroots movement". MoeDict, an early g0v project, was led by one of the authors of this book.

[^g0vManifesto]：g0v宣言将其定义为“一个非党派、非营利、草根运动”。早期g0v项目MoeDict由本书作者之一领导。

g0v原则的维恩图，体现了开源、实践和公益精神。前两者的交集是自由软件，后两者的交集是社会行动主义，前两者和第三者的交集是公民媒体。g0v位于中心。

Figure 2-2-A. Principles of g0v displayed in a venn diagram.

图2-2-A. 以维恩图显示的g0v原则。

g0v built on this success to establish a vibrant community of civic hackers interacting with a range of non-technical civil society groups at regular hackathon, called "jothons" (based on a Mandarin play on words, meaning roughly "join-athon"). While hackathons are common in many parts of the world, some of the unique features of g0v practices include the diversity of participants (usually a majority non-technical and with nearly full gender parity), the orientation towards civic problems rather than commercial outcomes and the close collaboration with a range of civic organizations. These features are perhaps best summarized by the slogan "Ask not why nobody is doing this. You are the 'nobody'!", which has led the group to be labeled the "nobody movement". They are also reflected in a Venn diagram commonly used to explain the movement's intentions shown in Figure A. As we will note below, a majority of the initiatives we highlight grew out of g0v and closely aligned projects.

g0v在此基础上取得了成功，建立了一个充满活力的公民黑客社区，他们在定期的黑客马拉松（称为“jothons”，基于普通话的文字游戏，大致意思是“加入马拉松”）中与各种非技术性的公民社会团体互动。虽然黑客马拉松在世界许多地方都很常见，但g0v实践的一些独特之处包括参与者的多样性（通常是非技术人员占多数，并且几乎完全实现了性别平等）、关注公民问题而非商业成果以及与一系列公民组织的密切合作。这些特点或许可以用“别问为什么没有人这样做，你就是那个‘没有人’！”这句口号来概括，这使得该组织被贴上了“没有人运动”的标签。它们也反映在一个常用的维恩图中，该图用于解释该运动的意图，如图A所示。正如我们将在下面指出的那样，我们重点介绍的大多数倡议都源于g0v和密切相关的项目。

Sunflower

向日葵

While g0v gained significant public attention and support even in its earliest years, it burst most prominently onto the public scene during the Sunflower Movement we described above. Hundreds of contributors in the g0v community were present during the occupation of the Legislative Yuan (LY), aiding in broadcasting, documenting and communicating civic actions. Livestream-based communication sparked heated discussion among the public. Street vendors, lawyers, teachers, and designers rolled up their sleeves to participate in various online and offline actions. Digital tools brought together resources for crowdfunding, rallies, and international voices of support.

虽然g0v即使在其早期也获得了公众的广泛关注和支持，但在我们上面描述的向日葵运动期间，它最为引人注目地进入了公众视野。g0v社区中的数百名贡献者都参与了立法院的占领行动，协助广播、记录和沟通公民行动。基于直播的沟通引发了公众的热烈讨论。街头小贩、律师、教师和设计师都卷起袖子参与各种线上和线下的行动。数字工具汇集了为众筹、集会和国际支持发声的资源。

On March 30, 2014, half a million people took to the streets in the largest demonstration in Taiwan since the 1980s. Their demands, thus formulated, for a review process prior to the passage of the Cross-Straits Services Trade Agreement was accepted by LY Speaker Wang Jin-pyng on April 6, about three weeks after the start of the occupation, leading to its dispersal soon thereafter. The contributions of g0v to both sides and the resolution of their tensions led the sitting government to see the merit in g0v's methods and in particular cabinet member Jaclyn Tsai recruited one of us as a youth "reverse mentor" and began to attend and support g0v meetings, putting an increasing range of government materials into the public domain through g0v platforms.

2014年3月30日，五十万人走上街头，这是台湾自20世纪80年代以来最大规模的示威活动。他们提出的要求，即在通过《海峡两岸服务贸易协议》之前进行审查程序，于4月6日，即占领开始大约三周后，被立法院院长王金平接受，导致不久后示威活动结束。g0v对双方以及化解紧张局势的贡献，使当时的政府看到了g0v方法的优点，特别是内阁成员蔡玉玲聘请我们其中一人担任青年“反向导师”，并开始参加和支持g0v会议，通过g0v平台将越来越多的政府资料公之于众。

Many Sunflower participants devoted themselves to the open government movement; the following local (2014) and general (2016) elections saw a dramatic swing in outcomes of roughly 10 percentage points towards the Green camp, as well as the establishment of a new political party by the Sunflower leaders, the New Power Party, including leading Taiwanese rock star Freddy Lim. Together, these events significantly added to the momentum behind g0v and led to one of our appointment as Minister without Portfolio responsible for open government, social innovation and youth participation.

许多向日葵运动的参与者都投身于开放政府运动；随后的地方选举（2014年）和全国大选（2016年）的结果都出现了大约10个百分点的巨大转变，转向绿色阵营，以及由向日葵运动领导人组建了一个新的政党——时代力量，其中包括台湾著名摇滚明星林昶佐。这些事件共同极大地推动了g0v的发展势头，并导致我们其中一人被任命为负责开放政府、社会创新和青年参与的不分区部长。

vTaiwan and Join

vTaiwan和参与式治理平台（Join）

During this process of institutionalization of g0v, there was growing demand to apply the methods that had allowed for these dispute resolutions to a broader range of policy issues. This led to the establishment of vTaiwan, a platform and project developed by g0v for facilitating deliberation on public policy controversies. The process involved many steps (proposal, opinion expression, reflection and legislation) each harnessing a range of open source software tools, but has become best known for its use of the at-the-time(2015)-novel machine learning based open-source "wikisurvey"/social media tool Polis, which we discuss further in our chapter on Augmented Deliberation below. In short, Polis functions similarly to conventional microblogging services like X (formerly Twitter), except that it employs dimension reduction techniques to cluster opinions as shown in Figure B. Instead of displaying content that maximizes engagement, Polis shows the clusters of opinion that exist and highlights statements that bridge them. This approach facilitates both consensus formation and a better understanding of the lines of division.

在这个g0v制度化的过程中，人们越来越需要将能够解决这些争议的方法应用于更广泛的政策问题。这导致了vTaiwan的建立，这是一个由g0v开发的平台和项目，用于促进对公共政策争议的讨论。这个过程涉及许多步骤（提案、意见表达、反思和立法），每个步骤都利用了一系列开源软件工具，但它最出名的是使用了当时（2015年）新颖的基于机器学习的开源“wikisurvey”/社交媒体工具Polis，我们将在下面关于增强型协商的章节中进一步讨论。简而言之，Polis的功能类似于传统的微博服务，如X（前身为Twitter），但它采用降维技术来聚类意见，如图B所示。Polis不是显示最大化参与度的内容，而是显示存在的意见集群，并突出显示连接它们的语句。这种方法有助于形成共识，并更好地理解分歧之处。

vTaiwan上Polis显示的意见图，具有相似的观点聚类。

Figure 2-2-B. Clusters of consensual opinions generated by Polis on vTaiwan. Source: vTaiwan.tw, CC0 license.

图2-2-B. vTaiwan上Polis生成的共识意见集群。来源：vTaiwan.tw，CC0许可证。

vTaiwan was deliberately intended as an experimental, high-touch, intensive platform for committed participants. It had about 200,000 users or about 1% of Taiwan's population at its peak and held detailed deliberations on 28 issues, 80% of which led to legislative action. These focused mostly on questions around technology regulation, such as the regulation of ride sharing, responses to non-consensual intimate images, regulatory experimentation with financial technology and regulation of AI.

vTaiwan故意设计为一个实验性的、高接触的、密集型的参与者平台。在其巅峰时期，它拥有大约20万用户，约占台湾人口的1%，并就28个问题进行了详细的讨论，其中80%导致了立法行动。这些问题主要集中在技术监管问题上，例如拼车服务的监管、对非自愿亲密图像的回应、金融技术的监管实验以及人工智能的监管。

As a decentralized, citizen-led community, vTaiwan is also a living organism that naturally evolves and adapts as citizen volunteers participate in various ways. The community’s engagement experienced a downturn following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which interrupted face-to-face meetings and led to decreased participation. The platform faced challenges due to the intensive volunteering effort required, the absence of mandates for governmental responses, and its somewhat narrow focus. In response to these challenges, vTaiwan’s community has sought to find a new role between the public and the government and extend its outreach beyond the realm of Taiwanese regulation in recent years. A significant effort to revitalize vTaiwan was its collaboration with OpenAI’s Democratic Input to AI project in 2023. Through partnerships with Chatham House and the organization of several physical and online deliberative events centered on the topic of AI ethics and localization, vTaiwan successfully integrated local perspectives into the global discourse on AI and technology governance. Looking ahead to 2024, vTaiwan plans to engage in deliberations concerning AI-related regulations in Taiwan and beyond. In addition to Polis, vTaiwan is constantly experimenting with new deliberation and voting tools, integrating LLMs for summarization. The vTaiwan community remains committed to democratic experimentation and finding consensus among the public for policymaking. The earlier experience of vTaiwan outside of government also inspired the design of the official Join platform, which is actively used by citizens as a means of proposing issues and ideas to the government.

作为一个去中心化的、公民领导的社区，vTaiwan也是一个自然进化和适应的活的有机体，公民志愿者以各种方式参与其中。随着2019冠状病毒病大流行的爆发，社区的参与度下降了，这打断了面对面的会议，并导致参与度下降。由于需要大量的志愿工作、缺乏政府回应的强制性以及其关注范围相对狭窄，该平台面临着挑战。为了应对这些挑战，vTaiwan社区近年来一直在努力寻找公共部门和政府之间的新角色，并将影响力扩展到台湾监管领域之外。一项振兴vTaiwan的重要努力是它在2023年与OpenAI的“民主参与人工智能”项目合作。通过与英国皇家国际事务研究所（Chatham House）的合作，以及围绕人工智能伦理和本地化主题组织了几次线下和线上的协商活动，vTaiwan成功地将地方视角融入到关于人工智能和技术治理的全球讨论中。展望2024年，vTaiwan计划参与有关台湾及其他地区人工智能相关法规的讨论。除了Polis之外，vTaiwan还在不断试验新的讨论和投票工具，整合大型语言模型进行总结。vTaiwan社区仍然致力于民主实验，并在公众中寻找政策制定的共识。早期vTaiwan在政府外部的经验也启发了官方参与式治理平台（Join）的设计，该平台被公民积极用作向政府提出问题和想法的一种手段。

The Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS) that one of us established in 2016 to work with vTaiwan and other projects we discuss below in the ministerial role therefore supported a second, related platform Join. While Join also sometimes used Polis, it has a lighter-weight user interface and focuses primarily on soliciting input, suggestions and initiatives from a broader public, and has an enforcement mechanism where government officials must respond if a proposal receives sufficient support. Unlike vTaiwan, furthermore, Join addresses a range of policy issues, including controversial non-technological issues such as high school's start time, and has strong continuing usage today of roughly half of the population over its lifetime and an average of 11,000 unique daily visitors.

我们其中一人在2016年建立的公共数字创新空间（PDIS）与vTaiwan和其他我们在部长任期内讨论的项目合作，因此支持了第二个相关的平台——参与式治理平台（Join）。虽然Join有时也使用Polis，但它具有更轻量级的用户界面，主要侧重于从更广泛的公众那里征求意见、建议和倡议，并具有强制执行机制，如果提案获得足够的支持，政府官员必须做出回应。此外，与vTaiwan不同的是，Join处理各种政策问题，包括有争议的非技术性问题，例如高中的上课时间，并且在今天仍然有大约一半的人口在其生命周期内使用，平均每天有11,000名独立访客。

Hackathons, coalitions and quadratic signals

黑客马拉松、联盟和二次信号

While such levels of digital civic engagement may seem surprising to many Westerners, they can be seen simply as the harnessing of a small portion of the energy typically wasted on conflict on (anti-)social media towards solving public problems. Even more concentrated applications of this principle have come by placing the weight of government behind the g0v practice of hackathons through the Presidential Hackathon (PH) and a variety of supporting institutions.

虽然这种程度的数字公民参与对许多西方人来说似乎令人惊讶，但这可以简单地看作是将通常浪费在（反）社交媒体冲突上的部分精力用于解决公共问题。通过总统黑客马拉松（PH）和各种支持机构，将政府的力量放在g0v黑客马拉松实践上，这种原则得到了更集中的应用。

The PH convened mixed teams of civil servants, academics, activists and technologists to propose tools, social practices and collective data custody arrangements that allowed them to "collectively bargain" with their data for cooperation with government and private actors supported by the government-supported program of "data coalitions" to address civic problems. Examples have included the monitoring of air quality and early warning systems for wildfires. Participants and broader citizens were asked to help select the winners using a voting system called Quadratic Voting that allows people to express the extent of their support across a range of projects and that we discuss in our ⿻ Voting chapter below. This allowed a wide range of participants to be at least partial winners, by making it likely everyone would have supported some winner and that if someone felt very strongly in favor of one project they could give it a significant boost. Winning projects received a trophy -- a microprojector showing the President of Taiwan giving the award to the winners, leverage they could use to induce relevant government agencies or localities to cooperate in their mission, given the legitimacy g0v has gained as noted above.

PH召集了由公务员、学者、活动家和技术专家组成的混合团队，以提出工具、社会实践和集体数据托管安排，使他们能够通过政府支持的“数据联盟”计划，与政府和私营部门行为者合作，就数据进行“集体谈判”以解决公民问题。例如，包括空气质量监测和野火预警系统。参与者和更广泛的公民被要求使用一种称为二次投票的投票系统来帮助选择获胜者，该系统允许人们表达他们对一系列项目的支持程度，我们将在下面的“投票”章节中讨论。这使得广泛参与者至少成为部分赢家，因为这使得每个人都可能支持某个赢家，并且如果有人非常支持某个项目，他们可以给予它很大的推动。获奖项目获得了一个奖杯——一个微型投影仪，上面显示台湾总统为获奖者颁奖，他们可以利用这个奖杯来促使相关的政府机构或地方政府在其任务中进行合作，因为g0v如上所述已经获得了合法性。

More recently, this practice has been extended beyond developing technical solutions to envisioning of alternative futures and production of media content to support this through "ideathons". It has also gone beyond symbolic support to awarding real funding to valued projects (such as around agricultural and food safety inspections) using an extension of Quadratic Voting to Funding as we discuss in our Social Markets chapter.

最近，这种实践已经超越了开发技术解决方案，扩展到设想替代未来和制作媒体内容以通过“创意马拉松”来支持这一目标。它也超越了象征性支持，而是为有价值的项目（例如，围绕农业和食品安全检查）提供实际资金，我们将在我们的“社会市场”章节中讨论将二次投票扩展到融资。

Pandemic

疫情

These diverse approaches to empowering government to more agilely leverage civil participation most dramatically came to a head during the Covid-19 pandemic. Taiwan is widely believed (based on statistics we will discuss in the next section of this chapter) to have had one of the world's most effective responses to the crisis stage of the pandemic. Notably, it achieved among the lowest global death rates from the disease during that stage without using lockdowns and while maintaining among the fastest rates of economic growth in the world. While being an island, having as Taiwan did an epidemiologist ready for an instant response as Vice-President and restricting travel clearly played a key role, a range of technological interventions played an important role as well.

这些赋能政府更灵活地利用公民参与的各种方法，在新冠肺炎疫情期间达到了顶峰。台湾被普遍认为（基于我们将在本章下一节讨论的统计数据）对疫情危机阶段做出了世界上最有效的应对之一。值得注意的是，在该阶段，它实现了全球最低的疾病死亡率之一，而没有采取封锁措施，同时保持了世界上最快的经济增长率之一。虽然作为一个岛屿，像台湾一样拥有一位随时准备应对的流行病学家作为副总统，以及限制旅行显然发挥了关键作用，但一系列技术干预也发挥了重要作用。

The best documented example and the one most consistent with the previous examples was the "Mask App". Given previous experience with SARS, masks in Taiwan were beginning to run into shortages by late January, when little of the world had even heard of Covid-19. Frustrated, civic hackers led by Howard Wu developed an app that harnessed data that the government, following open and transparent data practices harnessed and reinforced by the g0v movement, to map mask availability. This allowed Taiwan to achieve widespread mask adoption by mid-February, even as mask supplies remained extremely tight given the lack of a global production response at this early stage.

最有名的例子，也是与之前的例子最一致的例子是“口罩应用程序”。鉴于之前与SARS的经验，到1月下旬，当世界大部分地区甚至还没有听说过新冠肺炎时，台湾的口罩就开始短缺了。吴汉忠领导的公民黑客们感到沮丧，他们开发了一个应用程序，利用政府根据g0v运动所利用和加强的公开透明的数据实践收集的数据，来绘制口罩的可用性地图。这使得台湾在2月中旬就实现了口罩的广泛采用，即使在早期阶段，由于缺乏全球生产响应，口罩供应仍然非常紧张。

Another critical aspect of the Taiwanese response was the rigorous use of testing, tracing and supported isolation to avoid community spread of the disease. While most tracing occurred by more traditional means, Taiwan was among the only places that was able to reach the prevalence of adoption of phone-based social distancing and tracing systems necessary to make these an important and effective part of their response. This was, in turn, largely because of the close cooperation facilitated by PDIS between government health officials and members of the g0v community deeply concerned about privacy, especially given the lack in Taiwan of an independent privacy protection regime, a point we return to below. This led to the design of systems with strong anonymization and decentralization features that received broad acceptance.

台湾应对的另一个关键方面是严格使用检测、追踪和支持隔离来避免疾病的社区传播。虽然大多数追踪都是通过更传统的方式进行的，但台湾是能够达到基于手机的社交距离和追踪系统采用率的少数几个地方之一，这使得这些系统成为其应对措施中重要而有效的一部分。这反过来，很大程度上是因为PDIS促进了政府卫生官员和g0v社区成员之间的密切合作，这些成员非常关注隐私，尤其是在台湾缺乏独立的隐私保护制度的情况下，我们将在下面对此进行讨论。这导致了具有强大的匿名化和去中心化功能的系统的设计，并获得了广泛的接受。

Information integrity

信息完整性

Yet perhaps the single most important digital contributor to Taiwan's pandemic response was its ability to rapidly and effectively respond to misinformation and deliberate attempts to spread disinformation. This "superpower" has extended, however, well beyond the pandemic and been critical to the successful elections Taiwan has held during a time when a lack of information integrity has challenged many other jurisdictions.

然而，对台湾疫情应对最重要的数字贡献者可能是其快速有效地应对错误信息和故意传播虚假信息的能力。然而，这种“超级大国”远远超出了疫情范围，对台湾在缺乏信息完整性挑战许多其他司法管辖区的情况下成功举行的选举至关重要。

Central to those efforts, in turn, has been the g0v spin-off project "Cofacts," in which participating citizens rapidly respond to both trending social media content and to messages from private channels forwarded to a public comment box for requested response. Recent research shows that these systems can typically respond faster, equally accurately and more engagingly to rumors than can professional fact checkers, who are much more bandwidth constrained.[^CornellTech]

这些努力的核心是g0v的衍生项目“Cofacts”，参与的公民快速响应热门社交媒体内容以及转发到公共评论框中以请求回应的私人渠道的消息。最近的研究表明，这些系统通常比专业的事实核查员能够更快、更准确、更有效地回应谣言，而专业的事实核查员的带宽受到更多限制。[ ^CornellTech]

[^CornellTech]: Andy Zhao and Mor Naaman, "Insights from a Comparative Study on the Variety, Velocity, Veracity, and Viability of Crowdsourced and Professional Fact-Checking Services", Journal of Online Trust and Safety 2, no. 1. https://doi.org/10.54501/jots.v2i1.118.

[^CornellTech]: Andy Zhao和Mor Naaman，《关于众包和专业事实核查服务的种类、速度、真实性和可行性的比较研究的见解》，《在线信任与安全杂志》第2卷，第1期。https://doi.org/10.54501/jots.v2i1.118。

The technical sophistication of Taiwan's civil sector and its support from the public sector have aided in other ways as well. This has allowed organizations like MyGoPen and private sector companies like Gogolook to develop and, with public support, rapidly spread chatbots for private messaging services like Line that make it fast and easy for citizens to anonymously receive rapid responses to possibly misleading information. Government leaders' close cooperation with such civil groups has allowed them to model and thus encourage policies of "humor over rumor" and "fast, fun and fair" responses. For example, when a rumor began to spread during the pandemic that there would be a shortage of toilet paper created by the mass production of masks, Taiwan's Premier Su Tseng-chang famously circulated a picture of himself wagging his rear to indicate it had nothing to fear.

台湾民间部门的技术复杂性和来自公共部门的支持也以其他方式提供了帮助。这使得MyGoPen等组织和Gogolook等私营公司能够开发并通过公共支持快速传播用于Line等私人消息服务的聊天机器人，使公民能够快速、轻松地匿名接收可能具有误导性的信息的快速响应。政府领导人与这些民间团体的密切合作，使他们能够制定并鼓励“以幽默战胜谣言”和“快速、有趣和公平”的回应政策。例如，当疫情期间开始流传关于口罩大规模生产将导致卫生纸短缺的谣言时，台湾行政院长苏贞昌就有名地传播了一张自己摇晃臀部的照片，以表明它没有什么好担心的。

Together these policies have helped Taiwan fight off the "infodemic" without takedowns, just as it fought of the pandemic without lockdowns. This culminated in the January 13, 2024 election we mentioned above, in which a PRC campaign of unprecedented size and AI-fueled sophistication failed to polarize or noticeably sway the election.

这些政策共同帮助台湾在没有关闭的情况下战胜了“信息疫情”，就像它在没有封锁的情况下战胜了疫情一样。这最终导致了我们在上面提到的2024年1月13日的选举，在这次选举中，中国大陆史无前例的规模和人工智能驱动的复杂程度的宣传活动未能造成两极分化或明显影响选举。

Other programs

其他计划

While these are some of the most prominent examples of Taiwanese digital democratic innovation, there are many other examples we lack the space to discuss in detail but will briefly list here.

虽然这些是台湾数字民主创新最突出的例子，但还有许多其他例子，我们没有空间详细讨论，但将在此处简要列出。

1. Alignment assemblies: Taiwan has pioneered convening, increasingly common around the world, of citizen participation in the regulation and steering of AI foundation models.

   协调大会：台湾率先召开了公民参与人工智能基础模型的监管和引导工作，这在世界各地越来越普遍。

2. Information security: Taiwan has become a world leader in the use of distributed storage to guard against malicious content takedowns and of "zero trust" principles in ensuring the security of citizen accounts.

   信息安全：台湾已成为利用分布式存储来防止恶意内容被删除和在确保公民账户安全方面使用“零信任”原则的世界领导者。

3. Gold cards: Taiwan has among the most diversely accessible paths to permanent residence through its "gold card" program, including in a "digital field" to those who have contributed to open source and public interest software.

   金卡：通过其“金卡”计划，台湾拥有最易获得的永久居留权途径之一，包括对那些为开源和公共利益软件做出贡献的人员提供的“数字领域”。

4. Transparency: Building on and extending broader government policies of data transparency, one of us has modeled this idea by making recordings and/or transcripts all of her official meetings public without copyrights.

   透明度：在更广泛的政府数据透明政策的基础上并加以扩展，我们当中的一位通过公开所有官方会议的录音和/或记录（无版权）来实践这一理念。

5. Digital competence education: Since 2019, Taiwan has pioneered a 12-Year Basic Education Curriculum that enshrines "tech, info & media literacy" as a core competency, empowering students to become active co-creators and discerning arbiters of media, rather than passive consumers.

   数字素养教育：自2019年以来，台湾率先推出了12年基础教育课程，将“科技、信息和媒体素养”确立为核心能力，使学生能够成为积极的媒体共同创造者和明智的仲裁者，而不是被动的消费者。

6. Land and spectrum: Building on the ideas of Henry George, Taiwan has among the most innovative policies in the world to ensure full utilization of natural resources, land and electromagnetic spectrum through taxes that include rights of compulsory sale (as we discuss further in our and chapters).

Furthermore, this work sufficiently won the confidence of both the public and the government that in August 2022 Taiwan created a Ministry of Digital Affairs, elevating one of us from Minister without Portfolio to lead this new ministry.

此外，这项工作充分赢得了公众和政府的信任，因此台湾于2022年8月成立了数字事务部，将我们中的一位从无任所部长提升为领导这个新部门。

Decade of accomplishment

十年成就

While this is an interesting set of programs, one might naturally inquire about evidence of their efficacy. Tracing causal impacts precisely for so many projects is obviously an arduous task beyond our scope here. But at very least it is reasonable to ask how Taiwan has performed overall on the range of challenges that has so troubled most liberal democracies in the last decades. We consider each categories of these in turn. Unfortunately, the quality of analysis and comparison possible is not all it could be given the complex geopolitics around Taiwan's international status meaning that many standard international comparators choose not to include it in their data.

虽然这是一套有趣的计划，人们自然会询问其有效性的证据。精确地追踪如此多项目的因果影响显然是一项艰巨的任务，超出了我们在这里的范围。但至少可以合理地询问台湾在过去几十年困扰大多数自由民主国家的各种挑战中的整体表现如何。我们将依次考虑这些挑战的每一类。不幸的是，鉴于台湾国际地位周围复杂的国际政治，可能的分析和比较质量并非尽善尽美，这意味着许多标准的国际比较者选择将其排除在其数据之外。

Economic

经济

While the economic lens of Taiwan's performance is far from the most important, it is one of the easier to quantify and provides a useful baseline for understanding the starting point for the rest. In one sense, Taiwan is an upper-middle income country, like much of Europe, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita of $34,000 per person in 2024 according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).[^IMFgdp] However, prices are much lower in Taiwan on average than in almost any other rich country; making this adjustment (which economists call "purchasing power parity") makes Taiwan the second richest country on average other than the US with more than 10 million people in the world. Furthermore, as we discuss below, most sources suggest that Taiwan is much more equal than the US, which means it is likely the country of that size with the highest typical living standards in the world. Thus Taiwan is best thought of as among the absolute most developed economies in the world, rather than as a middle-income country.

虽然从经济角度来看台湾的表现远非最重要的，但它是更容易量化的一种，并为理解其余部分的起点提供了有用的基准。从某种意义上说，台湾是一个中等偏上收入国家，就像欧洲大部分地区一样，根据国际货币基金组织 (IMF) 的数据，2024 年人均国内生产总值 (GDP) 为每人 34,000 美元。[^IMFgdp] 然而，台湾的物价平均远低于几乎所有其他富裕国家；进行这项调整（经济学家称之为“购买力平价”）使台湾成为世界上平均而言仅次于美国的第二富裕国家，人口超过 1000 万。此外，正如我们在下面讨论的那样，大多数消息来源表明，台湾比美国更加平等，这意味着它可能是世界上拥有最高典型生活水平的同等规模国家。因此，最好将台湾视为世界上最发达的经济体之一，而不是中等收入国家。

The sectoral focus of Taiwan's economy stands out as well. While perfectly comparable data are hard to come by, Taiwan is almost certainly the most digital export-intensive economy in the world, with exports of electronics and information and communication products accounting for roughly 31% of the economy, compared to less than half that fraction in other leading technology exporters such as Israel and South Korea.[^TradingEcon] This fact is best known to the world for what it reflects: that most of the world's semiconductors, especially the most advanced ones, are manufactured in Taiwan and Taiwan is also a major both manufacturer and domicile for manufacturers of smartphones such as Foxconn.

台湾经济的部门重点也十分突出。虽然很难找到完全可比的数据，但台湾几乎肯定是世界上出口密集型数字经济体，电子产品和信息通信产品的出口约占经济的 31%，而其他主要科技出口国（如以色列和韩国）的比例不到此比例的一半。[^TradingEcon] 这件事之所以广为人知，是因为它反映出：世界上大部分半导体，特别是最先进的半导体，都是台湾制造的，台湾也是智能手机制造商（如富士康）的主要制造商和所在地。

Taiwan is also unusual among rich countries in its relatively low tax take; according to the Asia Development Bank, Taiwan collected only 11% of GDP in taxes compared to 34% on average in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) club of rich countries.[^taxtake] Relatedly, Taiwan ranked 4th in the world in the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index.[^EconFreedom]

在富裕国家中，台湾的税收比例相对较低，这也很不寻常；根据亚洲开发银行的数据，台湾的税收仅占 GDP 的 11%，而经济合作与发展组织 (OECD) 富裕国家俱乐部的平均税收为 34%。[^taxtake] 同样，台湾在传统基金会经济自由指数中排名世界第四。[^EconFreedom]

Given this background, several features of Taiwan's economic performance in the last decade stand out.

鉴于此背景，台湾过去十年经济表现的几个特点非常突出。

1. Growth: Taiwan has averaged real GDP growth of 3% over the last decade, compared to less than 2% for the OECD, a bit over 2% for the US and 2.7% for the world overall.[^WB]

   增长：过去十年，台湾的实际 GDP 平均增长率为 3%，而经合组织的平均增长率不到 2%，美国的平均增长率略高于 2%，全球平均增长率为 2.7%。[^WB]

2. Unemployment: Taiwan has averaged an unemployment rate of just under 4% steadily in the last decade, compared to an OECD average of 6%, a US average of 5% and a world average of around 6%.

   失业：过去十年，台湾的平均失业率一直稳定在 4% 以下，而经合组织的平均失业率为 6%，美国的平均失业率为 5%，全球平均失业率约为 6%。

3. Inflation: While inflation has spiked and wildly fluctuated around the world including almost all rich countries, Taiwan's inflation rate has remained relatively steady the last decade in the 0-2% range, averaging 1.3% according to the IMF.

   通货膨胀：虽然包括几乎所有富裕国家在内的世界各地通货膨胀率都飙升且波动剧烈，但台湾的通货膨胀率在过去十年中一直保持相对稳定，在 0-2% 的范围内，根据国际货币基金组织的数据，平均为 1.3%。

4. Inequality: The last decade has seen significant debate about methods in calculating inequality statistics. Using more traditional methods, Taiwan's Survey of Family Income and Expenditure has found that Taiwan's Gini Index of inequality (ranging from 0 for perfectly equal to 1 for perfectly unequal) has been steady at around .28 for the last decade, placing it around the level of Austria on the lower end of global inequality and far lower than the roughly .4 of the US. Other analyses, using innovative but controversial administrative approaches pioneered by economists including Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman show Taiwan's top 1% income share at 19%, not far behind the US at 21% and well above a country like France at 13%. However, even in these data, Taiwan's top 1% share has fallen by about a tenth in the last decade, while in both France and the US it has risen by a similar proportion. Furthermore, a number of studies have recently argued these methods tend to find higher inequality in countries and time periods with lower and less progressive taxes as they rely on tax administration data and struggle to fully account for induced avoidance.[^Inequalitycritique] Given Taiwan's dramatically lower tax take than either the US or France, it seems likely that if these issues apply anywhere, they would lead to a substantial overstatement of Taiwanese inequality.[^CapitalShare]

   不平等：过去十年，关于计算不平等统计数据的各种方法一直存在重大争论。使用更传统的方法，台湾的家庭收支调查发现，台湾的不平等基尼系数（从完全平等的 0 到完全不平等的 1）在过去十年中一直稳定在 0.28 左右，使其处于全球不平等的较低端，与奥地利差不多，远低于美国的约 0.4。其他分析使用由包括埃曼纽尔·萨埃兹、托马斯·皮凯蒂和加布里埃尔·祖克曼在内的经济学家开创的创新但有争议的行政方法，显示台湾前 1% 的收入份额为 19%，与美国的 21% 差距不大，远高于法国的 13%。然而，即使在这些数据中，台湾前 1% 的份额在过去十年中也下降了约十分之一，而在法国和美国，这一比例却上升了类似的比例。此外，一些研究最近认为，这些方法往往会在税收较低且累退程度较低的国家和时期发现更高的不平等，因为它们依赖于税务行政数据，并且难以充分解释诱导的逃税行为。[^Inequalitycritique] 鉴于台湾的税收远低于美国或法国，如果这些问题适用于任何地方，它们很可能会导致对台湾不平等的严重夸大。[^CapitalShare]

Putting these facts together, what is notable is that Taiwan's economic performance has been strong and fairly egalitarian or at least not becoming more unequal despite its wealth and extreme tech-intensity. As we documented above, economists have widely blamed the role of technology for many recent economic woes, including slow growth, unemployment and rising inequality. In the world's most tech-intensive economy, this seems not to be the case.

综上所述，值得注意的是，尽管台湾经济发达且技术密集程度极高，但其经济表现仍然强劲且相当平等，或者至少没有变得更加不平等。正如我们在上面所记录的那样，经济学家普遍将技术归咎于许多最近的经济问题，包括增长缓慢、失业和不平等加剧。在世界上技术密集程度最高的经济体中，情况似乎并非如此。

Social

社会

Internationally comparable social indicators are far more difficult than even economic ones for Taiwan, given that it is excluded from the World Health Organization (WHO). However, we were able to find roughly comparable data on two commonly cited social indicators: loneliness and self-reported technology addiction. Loneliness among older adults (above 65) in Taiwan stands at roughly 10%, which puts it around similar rates in the least affected countries in the world (mostly in Northern Europe), better than in North America (roughly 20%) and much better than in the PRC (more than 30%).[^Loneliness] Another comparison is self reported cellphone addiction rates, which are fairly high in Taiwan (at roughly 28%) but much lower than in the US (at 58%).[^Addiction] Differences in rates of addiction to controlled substances are even more dramatically different, with about 10 times as many Americans reporting using illegal drugs at least monthly than Taiwanese who have ever tried an illegal drug.[^drugs]

鉴于台湾被排除在世界卫生组织 (WHO) 之外，与国际上可比的社会指标相比，即使是经济指标也更为困难。然而，我们能够找到大约两个常用的社会指标的近似可比数据：孤独感和自我报告的技术成瘾。台湾 65 岁以上老年人的孤独感约为 10%，这使其与世界上受影响最小的国家（主要在北欧）的比率大致相同，好于北美（约 20%），远好于中国大陆（超过 30%）。[^Loneliness] 另一个比较是自我报告的手机成瘾率，台湾的成瘾率相当高（约为 28%），但远低于美国（58%）。[^Addiction] 受控物质成瘾率的差异更为显著，每月至少使用非法药物的美国人数量是尝试过非法药物的台湾人的约 10 倍。[^drugs]

Taiwan is also marked by a unique experience with religion among rich countries, almost all of which (especially the United States) are both dominated by a single broad religious group (e.g. Christianity) and have seen dramatic declines in a range of measures of religiosity including affiliation and participation in the past decades.[^GivingUp] Religion in Taiwan, by contrast, is far more diverse with a roughly equal mix of followers of four distinct religious traditions: folk religion, Taoism, Buddhism, Western and minority religions, with about an equal proportion as each of these being non-believers.[^religionTaiwan] At the same time, while there has been some shift among these groups, there has hardly been any significant increase in non-belief or non-practicing in Taiwan in the past decades.[^wikireligion]

台湾在富裕国家中独特的宗教体验也具有标志性意义，几乎所有富裕国家（尤其是美国）都同时被单个广泛的宗教群体（例如基督教）主导，并且在过去几十年中，包括隶属关系和参与度在内的一系列宗教虔诚度指标都出现了显著下降。[^GivingUp] 相比之下，台湾的宗教信仰更加多样化，大约有四种不同的宗教传统信徒数量大致相等：民间宗教、道教、佛教、西方和少数民族宗教，其中不信教者的比例与这些宗教的比例大致相等。[^religionTaiwan] 与此同时，尽管这些群体之间发生了一些转变，但在过去几十年中，台湾的不信教或不实践宗教的人数几乎没有出现任何显著增加。[^wikireligion]

Political

政治

Taiwan is widely recognized both for the quality of its democracy and its resilience against technology-driven information manipulation. Several indices, published by organizations such as Freedom House[^Freedom], the Economist Intelligence Unit[^EIU], the Bertelsmann Foundation and V-Dem, consistently rank Taiwan as among the freest and most effective democracies on earth.[^demrank] While Taiwan's precise ranking differs across these indices (ranging from first to merely in the top 15%), it nearly always stands out as the strongest democracy in Asia and the strongest democracy younger than 30 years old; even if one includes the wave of post-Soviet democracies immediately before this, almost all are less than half Taiwan's size, typically an order of magnitude smaller. Thus Taiwan is at least regarded as Asia's strongest democracy and the strongest young democracy of reasonable size and by many as the world's absolute strongest. Furthermore, while democracy has generally declined in every region of the world in the last decade according to these indices, Taiwan's democratic scores have substantially increased.

台湾以其民主制度的质量及其抵御技术驱动的信息操纵的能力而闻名于世。自由之家[^Freedom]、经济学人信息社[^EIU]、贝特尔斯曼基金会和 V-Dem 等组织发布的几项指数始终将台湾列为地球上最自由和最有效的民主国家之一。[^demrank] 虽然台湾在这些指数中的精确排名有所不同（从第一名到仅排名前 15%），但它几乎总是被认为是亚洲最强大的民主国家，也是最强大的 30 岁以下的民主国家；即使包括在此之前的后苏联民主浪潮，几乎所有这些民主国家都不到台湾规模的一半，通常要小一个数量级。因此，台湾至少被认为是亚洲最强大的民主国家，也是规模合理的、最强大的年轻民主国家，并且许多人认为它是世界上最强大的民主国家。此外，根据这些指数，尽管过去十年世界各地区民主普遍衰退，但台湾的民主得分却大幅上升。

In addition to this overall strength, Taiwan is noted for its resistance to polarization and threats to information integrity. A variety of studies using a range of methodologies have found that Taiwan is one of the least socially, ethnically and religiously polarized developed countries in the world, though some have found a slight upward trend in political polarization since the Sunflower movement.[^polarization] This is especially true in affective polarization, the holding of negative or hostile personal attitudes towards political opponents, with Taiwan consistently among the 5 least affectively polarized countries.[^LeaderAffectivePolarization]

除了这种整体实力外，台湾还以其对两极分化和信息完整性威胁的抵抗力而闻名。使用各种方法进行的各种研究发现，台湾是世界上社会、种族和宗教极化程度最低的发达国家之一，尽管一些研究发现自向日葵运动以来政治极化略有上升趋势。[^polarization] 这在情感极化方面尤其如此，即对政治对手持有消极或敌对的个人态度，台湾一直是情感极化程度最低的 5 个国家之一。[^LeaderAffectivePolarization]

This is despite analyses consistently finding Taiwan to be the jurisdiction targeted for the largest volume of disinformation on earth.[^disinfovolume] One reason for this paradoxical result may be the finding by political scientists Bauer and Wilson that unlike in many other contexts, foreign manipulation fails to exacerbate partisan divides in Taiwan. Instead, it tends to galvanize a unified stance among Taiwanese against external interference.[^Disinfo]

尽管分析始终发现台湾是世界上受到最大规模虚假信息攻击的司法管辖区。[^disinfovolume] 这种矛盾结果的一个原因可能是政治学家鲍尔和威尔逊的发现，即与许多其他情况不同，外国操纵未能加剧台湾的党派分歧。相反，它往往会激起台湾人民对外部干涉的统一立场。[^Disinfo]

Legal

法律

Taiwan is consistently ranked as one of the five safest countries in the world and the safest democracy in the world with more than 100,000 people by a very large margin.[^crime] When one of us first traveled to Taiwan, he was shocked to receive compensation for his flight as a large envelope of cash, which most Taiwanese feel comfortable carrying given the extreme safety. Furthermore, crime in Taiwan continues to trend steadily downward even as countries like the US have seen dramatic surges in especially violent crime.[^crimevus] It is worth noting, however, that it has achieved this historically with a fairly strong police presence (somewhat higher than the US) and an incarceration rate that while far short of the US is high by global standards.

台湾一直被评为全球五大最安全国家之一，也是全球最安全的民主国家，其人口超过10万人，优势非常明显。[^crime] 我们中的一位初次到台湾旅行时，惊讶地收到了用一个大信封装着的现金作为航班补偿，鉴于台湾极高的安全水平，大多数台湾人都觉得携带现金很安全。此外，即使像美国这样的国家暴力犯罪急剧增加，[^crimevus] 台湾的犯罪率仍在持续稳步下降。然而，值得注意的是，台湾在历史上一直维持相当强大的警力（略高于美国），其监禁率虽然远低于美国，但按全球标准衡量仍然很高。

Taiwan's legal-political system has also distinguished itself for its ability to adapt to inclusively resolve long-standing social conflicts. In 2017, the Constitutional Court ruled that the government must pass a law to legalize same-sex marriage within two years. After the failure of a referendum on a straightforward same-sex marriage proposal in 2018, the government found a creative way to respond to the interests of all sides. Many who opposed same-sex marriage were concerned that because of traditions of extended families being bound together by marriage, family members opposing the practice could be forced to participate. At the same time, most young people who planned to take advantage of the new provision had more individualistic, partner-based visions of marriage and had no desire to bind their families either, leading the government to pass a legalization bill that exempted kin from the same-sex marriage process.

台湾的法律政治体制也因其适应性强，能够包容性地解决长期存在的社会冲突而著称。2017年，宪法法院裁定，政府必须在两年内通过法律使同性婚姻合法化。在2018年一次关于同性婚姻提案的公投失败后，政府找到了一种创造性的方法来回应各方的利益。许多反对同性婚姻的人担心，由于传统上大家庭通过婚姻联系在一起，反对同性婚姻的家庭成员可能会被迫参与其中。与此同时，大多数计划利用这项新规定的年轻人对婚姻持有更个人主义、以伴侣为中心的看法，并且也不希望束缚他们的家庭，这促使政府通过了一项将亲属排除在同性婚姻程序之外的合法化法案。

Existential

生存

Crises come rarely and with low probability. It is thus hard to know how well Taiwan might perform in avoiding or mitigating one. However, perhaps the closest one can reach for is an emergency that did occur: the Covid-19 pandemic. As noted above, Taiwan was widely seen as among the best if not the very best performing country in the world during this episode and here we discuss the quantitative reasons for this esteem.

危机很少发生，发生的可能性也很低。因此，很难知道台湾在避免或减轻危机方面的表现如何。然而，也许最接近的例子是一次确实发生的紧急事件：2019冠状病毒病疫情。如上所述，台湾在这次疫情中的表现被广泛认为是全球最好或最好的国家之一，在这里我们将讨论这种赞誉背后的量化原因。

The exceptional performance that won Taiwan this international acclaim occurred during the focal early stages of the pandemic, during which much of the world was in rolling lockdowns prior to the availability of the vaccine. We can call this the "crisis" stage of the pandemic and declare it to have ended in April 2021, when vaccines were widely available in the US. From the start of the pandemic to April 2021, Taiwan suffered only 12 deaths to the pandemic, giving it by far the lowest death rate to that point of any jurisdiction with estimates considered internationally accurate. Furthermore, Taiwan achieved this without any lockdowns and achieved the fastest economic growth of any rich country bar Ireland in 2020. More broadly, Taiwan's health system has for the better part of a decade been ranked as the world's most efficiently performing by Numbeo, though life expectancy in Taiwan is merely among the highest in the world.^Numbeohealth

赢得台湾国际赞誉的杰出表现发生在疫情暴发的早期阶段，在此期间，在疫苗可用之前，世界大部分地区都处于反复的封锁状态。我们可以称之为疫情的“危机”阶段，并宣布它在2021年4月结束，当时疫苗在美国广泛可用。从疫情开始到2021年4月，台湾仅有12人死于疫情，这使其成为在那时点上任何拥有国际公认准确估计值的司法管辖区中，死亡率最低的地区。此外，台湾在没有采取任何封锁措施的情况下实现了这一点，并在2020年取得了除爱尔兰以外所有富裕国家中最快的经济增长速度。更广泛地说，在过去的十年中，台湾的医疗系统一直被Numbeo评为全球效率最高的医疗系统，尽管台湾的预期寿命仅仅位居世界前列。^Numbeohealth

It is important to note, however, that Taiwan performed much less impressively during the "post-crisis" phase following mid-2021, during which vaccine availability and uptake were the most critical components of response and challenges with domestic vaccine production and distribution led to significant loss of life in the coming years. Taiwan still had among the lowest death rates and best economic performance reliably measured by a rich jurisdiction of significant size, but its exceptional leadership early in the pandemic did not fully persist after the crisis phase. This may indicate that the cohesion and civic engagement fostered by crises (like Sunflower and the Pandemic) allow Taiwan to respond more effectively than anywhere in the world, but that additional care and focus is needed to ensure these efforts are institutionalized and sustainable, an important direction for the future we discuss further below.

然而，必须指出的是，在2021年中期以后的“危机后”阶段，台湾的表现远不如令人印象深刻，在此期间，疫苗的可用性和接种率是应对疫情最关键的因素，而国内疫苗生产和分发方面的挑战导致未来几年大量人员死亡。台湾的死亡率仍然是所有规模较大的富裕司法管辖区中最低的之一，经济表现也最好，但其在疫情早期展现的杰出领导力在危机阶段之后并未完全持续下去。这可能表明，由危机（如向日葵运动和疫情）造成的凝聚力和公民参与度使台湾能够比世界上任何地方都更有效地应对危机，但这需要额外的关注和重点来确保这些努力能够制度化和可持续发展，这是我们将在下面进一步讨论的未来重要方向。

Another slow-burning crisis that may illustrate this challenge is climate change. While Taiwan has joined many other countries in enshrining its 2050 net zero ambitions into law and has won praise for its plans to reach this goal, its progress thus far has been modest.[^climate] More broadly, Taiwan has a strong but not outstanding record on environmental protection.[^epi]

另一个可能说明这一挑战的缓慢发展的危机是气候变化。虽然台湾已加入许多其他国家，将其2050年净零排放目标写入法律，并因其实现这一目标的计划而获得赞扬，[^climate] 但迄今为止，其进展甚微。[^climate] 更广泛地说，台湾在环境保护方面有良好的记录，但并非出色。[^epi]

[^climate]: “Net Zero Tracker,” Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, 2023. https://eciu.net/netzerotracker. [^epi]: “2022 EPI Results,” Environmental Performance Index, 2022, https://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2022/component/epi.

[^climate]：“净零追踪器”，能源与气候情报机构，2023年。https://eciu.net/netzerotracker。[^epi]：“2022年EPI结果”，环境绩效指数，2022年，https://epi.yale.edu/epi-results/2022/component/epi。

Taiwan nonetheless exhibits unusually high levels of participation and trust in institutions, particularly in its democracy. Voter turnout is among the highest in the world outside countries where voting is compulsory.[^turnout] 91% consider democracy to be at least "fairly good", a sharp contrast to the dramatic declines in recent years in support for democracy even in many long-established democracies.[^demsupp]

尽管如此，台湾在机构参与和信任方面，尤其是在其民主制度方面，表现出异常高的水平。除了强制投票的国家外，台湾的投票率位居世界前列。[^turnout] 91%的人认为民主至少是“相当好”的，这与近年来即使在许多长期存在的民主国家中，对民主的支持也急剧下降形成了鲜明对比。[^demsupp]

[^turnout]: Drew DeSilver, “Turnout in U.S. Has Soared in Recent Elections but by Some Measures Still Trails that of Many Other Countries.” Pew Research Center, November 1, 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/.

[^turnout]：Drew DeSilver，“美国最近几届选举的投票率大幅飙升，但在某些衡量标准下仍落后于许多其他国家。”皮尤研究中心，2022年11月1日。https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/。

[^demsupp]: “Taiwan Country Report Report,” BTI Transformation Index, n.d., https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-report/TWN.

[^demsupp]：“台湾国别报告”，BTI转型指数，未注明日期，https://bti-project.org/en/reports/country-report/TWN。

In short, while like all countries it has key limitations, Taiwan deserves a leading place among global exemplars that it is too rarely afforded. Admiration for Scandinavian countries is a constant refrain on the left in the West, as is praise for Singapore on the right. While all these jurisdictions have important lessons and in fact many important points of overlap with Taiwan, few places offer the breadth of promise in addressing today's leading challenges that Taiwan does and appeal across the typical divides as it does. As an economically free, vibrantly participatory liberal democracy Taiwan both has something to offer all points on the political spectrum of the West and holds arguably the most compelling example available to those looking to leapfrog the practices of increasingly ailing Western democracies. This is especially true given its starting point: without abundant natural resources or strategic position, in a fragile geopolitical setting, with a deeply divided rather than homogeneous and robust sized population and only democratizing a few decades ago, rising from abject poverty in less than a century.

简而言之，虽然台湾像所有国家一样存在关键局限性，但它应该在全球典范中占据领先地位，而这种地位却鲜为人知。西方左派人士经常赞扬斯堪的纳维亚国家，而右派人士则赞扬新加坡。虽然所有这些司法管辖区都有重要的经验教训，而且实际上与台湾有很多重要的重叠之处，但很少有地方能够像台湾那样在应对当今的主要挑战方面展现出如此广阔的前景，并且能够跨越典型的分歧。作为一个经济自由、充满活力地参与的自由民主国家，台湾既可以为西方的所有政治观点提供借鉴，也为那些希望超越日益衰败的西方民主国家实践的人们提供了可以说是最有说服力的榜样。鉴于其起点，这一点尤其如此：没有丰富的自然资源或战略地位，地缘政治环境脆弱，人口深度分裂而非同质且规模庞大，而且只是在几十年前才实现民主化，在不到一个世纪的时间里就摆脱了赤贫。

It will doubtless take decades of study to understand the precise causal connections between Taiwan's unique and dramatic digital democratic practices and the range of success it has found in confronting today's most vexing challenges. Yet given this appeal, in the interim, it seems critical to articulate as so many have done for Scandinavia and Singapore, the generalizable philosophy behind the strategies of the world's most admired digital democracy. It is to that task that the rest of this book is devoted.

毫无疑问，需要几十年的研究才能理解台湾独特而引人注目的数字民主实践与其在应对当今最棘手挑战方面取得的各种成功之间的确切因果关系。然而，鉴于这种吸引力，在此期间，阐明许多人对斯堪的纳维亚国家和新加坡所做的那样，阐明世界上最受赞赏的数字民主国家的战略背后的普遍适用理念，似乎至关重要。本书其余部分将致力于这项工作。

[^IMFgdp]: “GDP per Capita, Current Prices,” International Monetary Fund, n.d., https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/TWN/CHN. [^TradingEcon]: “Exports,” Trading Economics, n.d., https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/exports. [^taxtake]: “Key Indicators Database,” Asian Development Bank, n.d., https://kidb.adb.org/economies/taipeichina; “Revenue Statistics 2015 - the United States,” OECD, 2015, https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pdf. [^WB]: “GDP Growth (Annual %),” World Bank, 2023. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.kd.zg; “GDP per Capita, Current Prices,” International Monetary Fund, n.d., https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/TWN/CHN. [^EconFreedom]: “Index of Economic Freedom.” The Heritage Foundation, 2023. https://www.heritage.org/index/. [^Inequalitycritique]: Gerald Auten, and David Splinter, “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends,” Journal of Political Economy, November 14, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1086/728741.

[^IMFgdp]：“人均GDP，现价”，国际货币基金组织，未注明日期，https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/TWN/CHN。[^TradingEcon]：“出口”，交易经济学，未注明日期，https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/exports。[^taxtake]：“主要指标数据库”，亚洲开发银行，未注明日期，https://kidb.adb.org/economies/taipeichina；“2015年税收统计——美国”，经合组织，2015年，https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-states.pdf。[^WB]：“GDP增长（年增长率）”，世界银行，2023年。https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.kd.zg；“人均GDP，现价”，国际货币基金组织，未注明日期，https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/TWN/CHN。[^EconFreedom]：“经济自由指数”，传统基金会，2023年。https://www.heritage.org/index/。[^Inequalitycritique]：Gerald Auten和David Splinter，“美国收入不平等：利用税收数据衡量长期趋势”，《政治经济学杂志》，2023年11月14日。https://doi.org/10.1086/728741。

[^CapitalShare]: The most interesting statistic we would like to report on is labor's share of income and its trends in Taiwan. However, to our knowledge no persuasive and internationally comparable study of this exists. We hope to see more research on this soon. [^Loneliness]: S. Schroyen, N. Janssen, L. A. Duffner, M. Veenstra, E. Pyrovolaki, E. Salmon, and S. Adam, “Prevalence of Loneliness in Older Adults: A Scoping Review.” Health & Social Care in the Community 2023 (September 14, 2023): e7726692. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/7726692. [^Addiction]: “More than Half of Teens Admit Phone Addiction .” Taipei Times, February 4, 2020. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2020/02/04/2003730302; “Study Finds Nearly 57% of Americans Admit to Being Addicted to Their Phones - CBS Pittsburgh.” CBS News, August 30, 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/study-finds-nearly-57-of-americans-admit-to-being-addicted-to-their-phones/. [^drugs]: “NCDAS: Substance Abuse and Addiction Statistics [2020],” National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, 2020, https://drugabusestatistics.org/; Ling-Yi Feng, and Jih-Heng Li, “New Psychoactive Substances in Taiwan,” Current Opinion in Psychiatry 33, no. 4 (March 2020): 1, https://doi.org/10.1097/yco.0000000000000604. [^GivingUp]: Ronald Inglehart, “Giving up on God: The Global Decline of Religion,” Foreign Affairs 99 (2020): 110. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/fora99&div=123&id=&page=. [^religionTaiwan]: “2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: Taiwan,” American Institute in Taiwan, June 8, 2023, https://www.ait.org.tw/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom-taiwan/#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20survey%20by. [^wikireligion]: “Religion in Taiwan,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, January 12, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Taiwan. [^demrank]: “Democracy Indices,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, March 5, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_indices#:~:text=Democracy%20indices%20are%20quantitative%20and.. [^polarization]: Laura Silver, Janell Fetterolf, and Aidan Connaughton, “Diversity and Division in Advanced Economies,” Pew Research Center, October 13, 2021, .; [^LeaderAffectivePolarization]: Andres Reiljan, Diego Garzia, Frederico Ferreira da Silva, and Alexander H. Trechsel. “Patterns of Affective Polarization toward Parties and Leaders across the Democratic World.” American Political Science Review 118, no. 2 (2024): 654–70. . [^disinfovolume]: Adrian Rauchfleisch, Tzu-Hsuan Tseng, Jo-Ju Kao, and Yi-Ting Liu, “Taiwan’s Public Discourse about Disinformation: The Role of Journalism, Academia, and Politics,” 17, no. 10 (August 18, 2022): 1–21, . [^Disinfo]: Fin Bauer, and Kimberly Wilson, “Reactions to China-Linked Fake News: Experimental Evidence from Taiwan,” The China Quarterly 249 (March 2022): 1–26. . [^crime]: “Crime Index by Country,” Numbeo, 2023, . [^crimevus]: “Taiwan: Crime Rate,” Statista, n.d, . [^Freedom]: “Freedom in the World,” Freedom House, 2023, . [^EIU]: “Democracy Index 2023,” Economist Intelligence Unit, n.d., .