Name: taiwan
Uploaded: 2020-04-22T09:57:32.000Z
Duration: 10 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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.

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.

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

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.

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...

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

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