Talking Taiwan1 Sep 2025

Ep 327 | Dr. Chen Chien-jen 陳建仁 Former VP of Taiwan Reflects Upon his Life in Politics and as a Public Servant

In July of 2024, we brought talking Taiwan to the 53rd annual Taiwanese American Conference, east Coast at Westchester University, where I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing Taiwan's, former vice President, Dr. Chen Chen (陳建仁). We talked about how Dr. Chen was trained to be an epidemiologist and was initially reluctant to go into politics, but then fate intervened and changed his mind when SARS hit Taiwan in 2003, and his experience handling the SARS outbreak as Taiwan's Minister of Health played an important role preparing him to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic as Taiwan's Vice President.

I asked Dr. Chen why it's important for Taiwan to be a member of the WHO World Health Organization and about the challenges he's faced as the Vice President and Premier of Taiwan. how he overcame them and why he decided not to run as Vice President with Tsai Ing-wen for a second term.

And finally, for some context, at the time of the interview, the Bluebird movement had emerged in Taiwan a month and a half earlier. I touched upon this with Dr. Chen briefly at the end of the interview.

At the time, more than a hundred thousand people in total had taken to the streets of Taiwan in a series of massive protests. It was a very public objection to controversial bills passed by Taiwan's opposition controlled Legislative Yuan. After interviewing Dr. Chen, I was left thinking if only the world had more politicians like him with a public service mindset, the world would be a better place.

This episode is sponsored in part by the Taiwanese American Council of Greater New York.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(318)

Ep 346 | George Yin Arts Advocacy Can be a Lifelong Passion TUF Part 1

We sat down to speak with George Yin, Board Chair of the Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation & Political Law Attorney about his interest in supporting the arts, why he thinks it's important to do so, ...

30 Mai 34min

Ep 345 | Passport to Taiwan 2026: Making Our Rounds with Taiwanese Community Organizations FAPA, TCCNY & NATMA

We stepped out in the drizzling rain for this year's Passport to Taiwan on Sunday, May 24th in New York City's Union Square Park, and were happy to see that the weather hadn't put much of a damper on ...

27 Mai 19min

Ep 344 | Vickie Wang (王宇平) on Who Gets to Be Taiwanese and Stand-Up Comedy Part 2

In part two of our interview with Vickie Wang (王宇平), she talked about how the COVID lockdown of 2022 in Shanghai affected her mental health, her thoughts on the Great Recall movement in Taiwan last ye...

24 Apr 1h 25min

Ep 343 | Vickie Wang (王宇平) Surviving the Shanghai COVID Lockdown of 2022 and Attitudes and Perceptions between Taiwanese and Chinese

Vickie Wang (王宇平) is a writer, interpreter, and stand-up comedian born and raised in Taiwan. She's lived in Shanghai, China for nearly a decade, where she started doing stand-up comedy under censorshi...

30 Mar 29min

Ep 342 | Kita Foundation: Mapping the Path for Trailblazers that Paved the Way for Taiwan's Democracy and Freedom

Every year we try to dedicate an episode of Talking Taiwan to 228, an important date in Taiwan's history, marking the 228 Massacre. 228 stands for February 28 1947. February 28th is now commemorated a...

17 Mar 1h 13min

Ep 341 | Dr Shih-Fen Chen 陳時奮 A Scholar with a Responsibility to Reveal the Truth

Last July, we brought Talking Taiwan to the 2025 Taiwanese American Conference, West Coast. While we were there, I sat down to speak with Dr. Shih-Fen Chen (陳時奮), who's also been known by his pen name...

23 Feb 22min

Ep 340 | China's Alarming Gray Zone Tactics Around Taiwan and its Neighboring Nations in Asia

Back in April 2021 we covered news about a record breaking 25 Chinese air force aircraft including fighters and nuclear-capable bombers that entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ). At...

7 Feb 38min

Ep 339 | Collective Memory Collective Trauma: A Conversation with Dr. Meng Chiang

At the end of 2024 I sat down with Dr. Meng Chiang, the Executive Director of the 2024 Taiwanese American Conference- East Coast. We had a really wonderful heart-centered conversation about the confer...

22 Jan 58min