Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hello everyone! Welcome to "A Laowai's View of Taiwan." I am Ben Hedges. After this crucial election in Taiwan, all candidates called upon the Taiwanese people to reunite. The elected President Tsai also said that people in our democracy should practice the skill of stamping. In additional to local media, there were also 113 foreign media that came to cover the elections in Taiwan. My coworkers, the China Uncensored production team also visited Taiwan. Let's take a look at what they think about the elections. What has your feeling been covering the election these past few days in the Taiwan? It's been inspiring being in Taiwan to see the elections. I mean in the US voter turnout is low people don't really have the the passion about democracy but coming here and like seeing how much it means to people it's incredible. Because many people here they lived under martial law they know what democracy means and they're willing to go out and vote for it be part of the system. It's wonderful. everybody we talked to outside the polling stations yesterday we asked them if Hong Kong influence their vote and the majority of people said that really made them think either about preserving the freedoms that Taiwan currently has or they just explicitly said we don't want to be the next Hong Kong the most memorable thing for me was yesterday we went to district 4 to look at the actual counting of the ballots you know It's like, “Tsai Ing-wen, One vote. Han Kuo-Yu, one vote!” And that was amazing to see, that you've got people counting the ballots then you've got the public they're monitoring this, and it's this this amazing system where it keeps everyone really honest. How did it make you feel? I felt moved to see just how much people are directly participating in that democracy. It's been amazing actually I would say that seeing Taiwan's democracy gave me hope in democracy again in a way. Because there are a lot of it's more direct here it's more grassroots in a way. Because I live in New York City so you know a lot of the election stuff in the U.S. that happens in Iowa or happened in New Hampshire. Nobody comes to New York City to like go shake hands with people on the street right, so seeing how dedicated the politicians were to trying to serve their constituents here, seeing people take voting so seriously, seeing people going to the you know ballot counting to watch them like— it was literally like every vote counts and that's something you don't really feel as much in America so that was an amazing experience. What has your impression been of the way Taiwanese people view the foreigners coming here to cover the election? Well it's been very interesting. I went to a press conference for one of the political candidates and then afterwards some of the local Taiwanese media started interviewing me which was kind of surprised and then there was a big story about me having beef hotpot. But I think a lot of it is you know just Taiwan has not gotten the recognition it deserves internationally and so I think they want to get some recognition and absolutely Taiwan is one of the largest most thriving democracies in Asia it's a country that deserves this kind of international respect and recognition and I think the elections really made the world take another look at Taiwan. The Taiwanese media seemed to be very interested in covering how much Western media are covering Taiwan and in fact they interviewed Chris on a couple different TV stations about his coverage. Chris had gone to an Enoch Wu press conference then other media ended up doing a story about how Western media are covering the Taiwan elections so that kind of meta. But I think it's really good to see how much America cares, and other countries care. Because to a degree this election in Taiwan is a referendum on cross-strait relations and other countries are increasingly realizing how important cross-strait relations are and how they need to support the Taiwan government because they're under constant threat How did you feel when you saw the result of a yesterday's election? It's amazing definitely there was a lot of nerves going on before the election because nobody really knew what was going to happen. Polling had been kind of blacked out ten days before the election I guess and you know people who were like looking at the rallies the Han Kuo-yu was having and there was a lot of people very passionate about him so it was really so it was really kind of — who's going to win? Nobody knows. And then just Wow! A landslide. DPP took the legislative win. Tsai Ing-wen landslide victory. It's really wild. But I think Tsai Ing-wen interesting made an interesting point in her victory speech that it didn't matter if she won, or if Han Kuo-Yu won, what mattered was that this is victory for democracy. Sure, but I think it really still mattered who won. Well, she was being very gracious. Would you say it's kind of like a historic election considering you know what it was a choice between? There was definitely parallels between this election than the recent elections in Hong Kong. In Taiwan and Hong Kong what you saw is the population saying we do not want the Chinese Communist Party so that is that as a victory for freedom and democracy globally. Do you also think that Taiwan is important as an example to Hong Kong or is in some way influencing Hong Kong if things go well in Taiwan it's you know has a good effect in Hong Kong. I think Hong Kong and Taiwan are both inspiring each other definitely the bravery of the Hong Kong protesters played a big part in this election as well and I was at many of the rallies here and there are Hong Kong protesters who came to see this kind of democracy in action so I think they are also being inspired by the people of Taiwan so I think both Hong Kong and Taiwan can really be a powerful force for bringing mostly democracy to mainland China. Aside from western media, let's take a look at what other western people in Taiwan think about the elections. I'm very new to Taiwan I moved to here like at the beginning of January. But it's it's very nice to see that in a society with a lot of ethnically Chinese people you can have like so much debate and so much democracy going on and it's... I mean it gives a lot of hope for for China for the mainland of China I mean it's not just Taiwan can have democracy but China can have democracy as well and I'm quite happy about the results of the elections because then we can keep the Communist out of Taiwan, and hopefully one day they will out of China. But for now yeah I think it's a good. I think its's a good result for Taiwan. There are a lot better position re-electing her than electing someone as unhinged and brash as the KMT candidate. I think the KMT are going to have to go back and reinvent themselves somewhat, that was not a good candidate they put up. It's been amazing. It's amazing like I guess Taiwan would be considered like a new democracy and you can see yeah so you can really see like how seriously people are taking it I think we in the West could probably learn something from it. Taiwan very strong sense of democracy so I wasn't really worried. A lot of my friends were but for them you know... Taiwanese friends? Yes, but some foreign friends too. Foreign friends were also worries about the results too, but the other thing too is that we sometimes forget that even though that we have different beliefs you know there's still people at the end of the day. And I found people that you know even though I've that I could I know what they believe in and they've I might disagree with them that they were still nice people at the end of the day. You know and sometimes we can forget about. Also, in her speech Tsai Ing-wen kind of said that, I don't know if you saw it last night, but she said words to that effect — like we have to come together, that kind of thing. Yeah you know like I was on the bus, and people might deride Tsai supporter and Han fans, But I was on the bus. There was a guy all dolled up in Han fan clothing. He had everything. But yes I was carrying a bunch of stuff and he still gave me the seat. Like it's still a normal person right. We forget about that a lot you know even if Han wins you know we have a there's a democracy that means needs to be maintained. The democracy doesn't end at the voting booth. It ends when we challenge our MPs. Okay. That's our show for today! What do you think? What are your views of the elections or the future of Taiwan? You're welcome to leave your comments or subscribe our channel. That's all for today. See you next time! And that beef hotpot story did have education value. I learned personally you know you put in there for 3 seconds only to get done. 10 seconds. Sorry to correct you. But the story said 3 secs? Then they got wrong. The person told us was 10 secs. What's difference between this time and last time? The last time we were here we weren't covering elections so it's hard to make a direct comparison. But I will say that my favorite thing about coming here was actually meeting Ben Hedges from "A Laowai's View of China and Taiwan." Well thank you so much for coming to me. Awesome!
B1 US taiwan democracy hong kong election tsai taiwan 23 3 楊欣穎 posted on 2020/04/22 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary