Commission goes online to seek opinions of youths

The ongoing Youth National Affairs Conference (青年國是會議) held by the National Youth Commission is moving online to collect young internet users ideas regarding national policies.

The commission has incorporated the virtual conference as part of a program of several live conferences held in southern, central, northern and western Taiwan.

In order to do so, the commission has cooperated with Gamania (遊戲橘子) and Chunghwa Telecom for technical support to set up an online survey so that users of Gamania, a popular online computer program, will be able to fill out a questionnaire which consists of 19 questions on their opinions about national policies.

"Between Sept. 9 and 15, Gamania users, who are mostly between age of 18 and 35, will be able to fill out this survey. We hope by gathering thoughts and ideas through the virtual world, an impact could be made in reality," Commission Chairwoman Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) said yesterday at a press conference about the survey.

Cheng stated that out of the millions of online users, many of them, though active in the virtual world, might be reticent in real life.

"Nevertheless, the government cares about their thoughts and ideas. Therefore, through holding such a conference online, we are hoping to make the event more diverse," said Cheng.

Examples of survey topics include college tuition, the constitutional amendment to cut the number of legislative seats by half, the suffrage age, Taiwan's foreign allies, and military conscription.

"Since starting our online games five years ago, we have attracted over 4 million members so far, with 40 percent of these users having earned or in the process of earning their college level degrees," said Sheng Ping-wen (沈秉文), chief operations officer of Gamania.

Participants in the Youth National Affairs Conference are between the age of 18 and 35.

In April this year, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) met with hundreds of university students.

"During that meeting in April, one of the issues the college students brought up with the president was that they hoped ADSL costs would be lowered. In response, we increased the bandwidth of our internet connection without charging extra. Later, the cost of ADSL was cut by 24 percent," said Huang Zih-han (黃子漢) of Chunghwa Telecom's sales department.