"Digital Residents" in Estonia: The Road to a New Identity｜"Presence·Non-Fiction Writing Scholarship"

This article is the award-winning work of the second season of "Presence · Non-fiction Writing Scholarship". "Presence" was initiated by Matters Lab and Renaissance Foundation to provide scholarships and editorial support for independent writers. You can follow the official website frontlinefellowship.io and Facebook to get the latest information on essays, lectures and other activities.

Author: Zhou Youyou Editor: Zhang Yan

100 euros is not a small amount of money, but it seems too cheap if it can buy a resident status in a European country.

From the end of 2014 to September 2022, more than 90,000 people around the world decided to invest 100 euros and "buy" a blue chip ID card from Estonia, a small Baltic country. The card bears the Estonian flag, is issued by the Estonian government, reads "Digital Identity Card" and states "Electronic Use Only".

The identity exchanged for 100 euros is called "e-Residency of Estonia". It is not a real resident status, the holder does not have the right of residence in Estonia, and cannot be exempted from visas, but the cardholder can remotely connect to Estonia's government and business networks through this card, and enjoy opening bank accounts, forming companies, and financial payments and other services that are basically equivalent to Estonian residents. Of the more than 90,000 digital residents, there are more than 4,600 mainland Chinese passport holders and 94 Hong Kong passport holders - for Estonia, China is the fifth largest number after Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Finland The country of importation of residents is also the number one non-European country.

On the social software Telegram (Telegram) and WeChat (WeChat), you can find several groups of Estonian digital residents who communicate in Simplified Chinese. Someone asked about the practical use of becoming a digital resident, and someone replied, "If you do it, you will be angry", "Spiritual immigrants, anyway, there is not much money".

Most of China's digital residents don't live in Estonia, or even set foot in the former Soviet republic, now a member of the European Union, bordering Russia to the east and across the sea from Finland and Sweden. According to the official statistics of the project, for every 100 digital residents, 24 will register an Estonian company; while for every 100 Chinese digital residents, only 8 will take action.

Three years ago, Liu Xiaochen, a Chinese citizen born in 1997, submitted an application to become a digital resident in Estonia. He remotely opened an account on Wise, a European online bank, and applied for a debit card - the purpose is very simple, "you can swipe it for overseas travel." This is where digital resident status is currently most useful to him.

In March 2022, Liu Xiaochen, who lived in Shanghai, heard rumors that the city might be closed. He entrusted his cat to a friend for foster care, "escaped from Shanghai", and went to Singapore and Bangkok, Thailand for short stays. The closure of the city in spring gave him a realistic blow. He said that he was blinded by the short-term comfortable life in Shanghai in 2021, and did not see the long-term restrictions imposed by the system on the country's development. "It is going to go downhill."

On the one hand, Liu Xiaochen said that he was disappointed with the domestic policy—the epidemic prevention is just an appearance—“I don’t want to be Chinese anymore.” On the other hand, he said that he was “not interested in politics, just want to make money.” When we were chatting, he was staying in a three-star hotel in Bangkok, paying more than 6,000 RMB a month for the room. The hotel "includes internet, cleaning, gym, and two bottles of water a day." He is active in the bitcoin circle and is the founder of a decentralized NFT game community and software. His daily life is full of work and fitness. He starts from the first meeting at 8 o'clock in the morning and is busy making money.

But digital nomads also face the day when their visas expire. Without returning to China, there is no way to apply for a Schengen visa. The "digital resident" does not provide residency, he cannot go to Estonia. He is in the process of applying for permanent residence status in Singapore. He said that he wants to move to a place where he can choose to live, "If you want to live a digital nomad life, you can live a digital nomad life; if you don't want to, you can live there."

1. The vision of breaking the "borders of different countries"

The project address of Estonian "Digital Residents" is on the second floor of a commercial building converted from an old factory in the capital city of Tallinn. The office retains the rough and mottled interior walls and drainage pipes of the factory building, and the words "e-Residency" spelled out by blue neon tubes are fixed on the wall. The open office area is a row of broadband monitors and standing desks.

The original intention of the project in 2014 stems from a practical problem that the government urgently needs to solve: a considerable part of basic services such as communication and banking in Estonia are provided by Nordic companies. Branches, reducing the operating costs of cooperation. "Digital residents" can allow these people to have government-backed identity certification in Estonia, set up Estonian companies with simple procedures, and smoothly access government services.

However, not long after the project was launched, it received an unexpectedly enthusiastic response. In addition to the existing overseas investors, more people want to become digital residents, and the project website was overwhelmed by traffic in the first month of its launch. Toomas Hendrik Ilves, then President of Estonia, and the three project founders decided to operate the project like a start-up to attract more "customers" to join. Kaspar Korjus, one of the founders, told audiences from all over the world in his Ted speech in 2016 that Estonia's digital resident project gave the possibility of "becoming a global citizen without being restricted by nationality or region."

Because I was a reporter for the English-language media, I learned about Estonia’s “Digital Resident” project in 2018. As a member of the group of leaving the country, every time I cross the border, when I am questioned by the border inspection at the airport or on the highway, I can feel that this "country border" that does not exist in daily life and is constructed, become so specific. The possible future offered by the "Digital Resident" project fascinates me deeply: In an ideal world order, "national borders" are no longer a ruling tool of sovereign states, and "citizenship" (citizenship) will be Tradable, liquid, technology-enabled, and shared vision.

The global epidemic broke out in 2020. For a while, the world stood still, and people could not travel and migrate. Citizens of other countries affected by the suspension of flights and customs closure policies of various countries can still realize the possibility of family reunion, migration and business exchanges by lobbying the government, while Chinese passport holders have no such way at all. In the context of rapid economic growth, the possession of Chinese nationality not only does not allow individuals to enjoy the convenience of connecting with the world, but restricts it everywhere.

Working from home every day, the "Digital Citizen" web page stays in my browser for a long time. Open the website, a global map emerges on the blue background, "Join us today!" - There are four entrances for applications on the homepage of the website. Whenever I couldn't help but click in, I couldn't make up my mind to fill out the application form: besides a beautiful vision, what practical use does a digital resident without the right of abode have?

Two years later, in the autumn, I flew across the Atlantic Ocean, across the Baltic Sea, and came to the birthplace of the "Digital Resident" project, wanting to see what this vision of crossing national borders looks like in reality.

This government department, which operates like a start-up company, posted portraits of target users on the wall of the office: freelancers living in Spain, German entrepreneurs who are tired of government procedures, and those who still need to maintain EU business ties after Brexit British businessmen-these people may not come to Estonia, but because of practical needs, they may register an Estonian company, which can bring a lot of financial income to the country.

Although there are many attractive business environments around the world, in Estonia, as long as you have a digital resident status and do not need local employees, you can register a completely remote company, and the annual maintenance fee starts at one or two hundred euros—this is more than It is much easier to open an offshore company in Hong Kong, Singapore or the Cayman Islands. Although Estonia's taxes are not low, the status of an EU business entity is quite attractive to many digital residents. Thirty percent of companies registered in Estonia today are founded by digital residents; in the first half of 2022, companies founded by digital residents provided the government with 24 million euros in taxes. “We want to democratize entrepreneurship,” Katrin Vaga, the project’s head of external relations, told me. “It’s easy to start a business here, it’s cheap, it’s fast, and it’s remote.”

Among the few Chinese citizens who have opened a company with a digital resident card is Rubin in Shenzhen. He runs an Australian digital currency trading company, doing asset entry and exit, and helping customers complete the conversion between digital assets and legal currency (referring to the currency issued by central banks of various countries). After becoming a "digital resident" in 2020, he registered an Estonian company and used it as the business entity of an Australian company in the European Union—"Through the Estonian company, I will collect your digital currency and send you euros."

Marwel, the founder of the Chinese website "Estonian Electronic Residents Community" , told me that in the Chinese Telegram group of about 130 people he runs, a considerable number of people hope to obtain an overseas status by applying for "digital residents". Open unlimited bank accounts and conduct financial transactions; others want to expand their business overseas and connect with the world, such as opening a company in Estonia. These are the two most common reasons.

For the 32-year-old Chen Juncheng, this blue chip card from Estonia not only helped him open an overseas company, but also found a direction for him to leave.

Chen Juncheng, who has worked in the blockchain industry for nearly ten years, now lives in Shenzhen. When the market value of Bitcoin jumped sharply in 2017, he tasted the sweetness of quick money. But since then, mainland China has strengthened the supervision of digital currency, and domestic exchanges have closed down or left for other countries. Chen Juncheng also has the idea of leaving. He learned about the "Digital Resident" project through his friends in the currency circle and decided to apply. One day in May 2022, he traveled from Shenzhen to Beijing, which is the only Estonian embassy in mainland China, and retrieved his digital resident identity card. "It was closed the next day" when I left.

In the spring of 2022, South Korea's stablecoin Luna coin collapsed, exacerbating Chen Juncheng's anxiety. He urgently needed to find an overseas entity for his blockchain company. "The United States has strict regulations, Singapore will only get stricter, and Estonia is friendly to Web3 entrepreneurship within the EU economy," he immediately registered an Estonian company with a digital resident card. This is a team of about 10 people, all working remotely, working on a trading system that uses gold as the benchmark currency for settlement.

Chen Juncheng learned about the startup visa established by Estonia for start-ups: if the company is considered compliant and innovative by the Estonian government, he can obtain a short-term residence visa to travel in EU countries. He has started to apply, and if approved, he can live in Estonia for five years.

Chen Juncheng compared leaving to the control of risks outside the warehouse of financial products. In order not to be "exploded", this is a "must, have to consider" thing. "I insist on going abroad. If you have no domestic background (in China), once you return to the planned economy, you will be very passive. The experience we have accumulated in the industry for so many years has no room for development in China."

Chen Juncheng, who was born in Wuhan, has not lived overseas for a long time. In 2019, he originally wanted to settle in Australia through skilled immigration, but when the epidemic broke out, he changed his plan and returned to his hometown. After China’s control of digital currency and three years of epidemic control, I asked him about the life he yearned for, and he replied, “At least, it’s possible to talk to the world.”

2. The Libertarian Shrug

In Tallinn's "Digital Resident" office, I was handed a copy of the statistics. There have been three peak stages of Chinese citizens joining the "Digital Resident" project; each peak is related to the mainland Chinese government's crackdown on digital currencies.

Before September 2017, mainland China could be described as a hotbed for the global expansion of digital currencies - about 90% of the world's bitcoin transactions occurred in the mainland, and nearly half of the bitcoins were dug out by mines located in China. The situation changed after the government ban was issued. On September 4, 2017, multiple departments of the Chinese government jointly issued the "Announcement on Preventing Financing Risks of Token Issuance", announcing that ICO (Initial Coin Offering) is defined as an illegal financial activity and that financing activities through digital currencies are prohibited. And require ongoing projects to stop trading. As soon as the "94 ban" came out, Huobi and OK Coin, the world's leading digital currency exchanges founded by the Chinese, announced that they would stop all transactions between digital currencies and RMB. BTC China, China's first digital currency exchange and the second largest trading volume in the world, shut down all transactions in China.

2017 was another year in which the market value of Bitcoin jumped sharply. Digital currency transactions that are not subject to government supervision have led to a large amount of RMB flowing out of the country through exchanges. The analysis article of the Financial Times said, "The crackdown on digital currency in mainland China's policy can be seen as an authoritarian government with unlimited powers that feels threatened by a decentralized digital currency that is not restricted by central authority... It makes Ordinary people can complete payments and investments without being regulated by the government.”

Amid heightened regulation, the Estonian “Digital Resident” project has been circulating in the currency circle. Zhang Tao, a Chinese citizen who has obtained the "digital resident" identity card, recalled that some opinion leaders (KOL) in the currency circle would spontaneously promote this project in the group at that time. In March 2018, 185 Chinese citizens became "digital residents" of Estonia, the highest number of Chinese applicants in a single month.

The second peak will appear in early 2020. At the end of 2019, the mainland Chinese government issued a series of signaling documents to further crack down on digital currencies . Since then, the epidemic has swept the world, and Chinese citizens' enthusiasm for "digital residents" has rekindled. In 2020, about 170 million U.S. dollars will flow out of mainland China in the form of digital currency, which is about 53% higher than the previous year.

In 2021, Bitcoin will usher in a new round of bull market. In September of that year, the Chinese government issued a stricter restriction document , prohibiting all transactions and mining activities within the mainland. In Tallinn’s “Digital Resident” office, data analyst Indrek Seppo pointed to the curve on the graph and told me that after a stable period of more than a year, in the last three months of 2021, Chinese applicants increased month by month. A third peak is formed.

The ups and downs of Bitcoin in China and the curve of Chinese applicants form a clear connection from the data. I asked Liu Xiaochen who wanted to "make money": Is it because of the relationship in the currency circle that he wants to "run away"? He asked me back: Why didn't you enter the currency circle after you had the value of "running away"?

In October, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is about to enter winter. The yellow leaves are withered, and the thick clouds are raining from time to time. There are more colors when you look down than look up. In Tallinn’s Old Town, which preserves medieval buildings, I meet Miao Zhicheng, the organizer of the “libertarian study group”—a figure several residents have mentioned to me. Miao Zhicheng can speak multiple languages. He moved to Tallinn for work in 2011 and started mining in 2016. Now he is a partner of a completely remote start-up company, providing blockchain companies with the underlying protocol of electronic payment systems.

Miao Zhicheng led me through an arcade, up a small building with red bricks and white walls, and came to an empty room on the second floor, where there were only a desk, a work chair and an unpacked projector. He introduced to me that this is the activity room of the study meeting, where the club will give lectures on taxation, exchange experiences on digital currency, and also hold film screenings. At the last event, they showed a movie of the same name based on the fifties novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand who influenced this generation of libertarians They - they believe in anarchy, no taxes, free markets. More than 50 years after the novel was published, blockchain technology has entered the public eye, and many people have become followers of the decentralized transaction model that can replace the money-based capital operation system. The values of the novel coincide with them .

Miao Zhicheng pointed out to me the number plate of the room, which reads "Vabaduse Tuba" in Estonian, which translates to "Freedom Room", which is the name he gave the activity room. He printed and distributed T-shirts to members of the society, with the face of American economist and libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard in the middle. According to Rothbard, taxes are robbery and governments are thieves. "Free Market, Anti-War" is also printed on the T-shirt. He gave me one too.

When the blockchain first became popular in 2015, the media was full of hope for the unknown. "The Economist" calls the blockchain a trust machine (Trust Machine), which allows people to build confidence in mutual collaboration without a central authority.

As early as 2018, Miao Zhicheng expounded on the relationship between Bitcoin and libertarians on the company blog . He writes, "Because of their disillusionment with centralized systems (especially governments), there has always been a group of people throughout history who wanted to revolutionize the way society works. They were called 'libertarians.' They were the first to dabble in the Bitcoin project. Because of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, they can complete transactions with each other without going through the central government. These "techno-utopians" (techno-utopians) believe that blockchain technology can make decentralized become a reality and eventually replace the centralized organizational model.”

He went on to argue: "The choice to decentralize is not to be more efficient or to expand faster - these may be easier to achieve in a centralized organizational model, but to create a possibility that can change the way the world works. Go to Centralization is an end, not a means.”

Rubin, who runs an Australian company for digital currency transactions, is not in a hurry to leave China, because his business still needs resources in China, and immigration is not a goal that can be accomplished in the short term. However, the identity of a "digital resident" has meanings beyond reality for him. He feels that this coincides with his personal values: he believes in a "decentralized" future, and feels that Estonia's digital governance will be a future sovereign state type of development. He told me that in the mainland currency circle, many people believe in a sentence mentioned by the American novelist William Gibson in the steampunk masterpiece "The Difference Engine": "The future has come, but it is not popular yet."

3. Building a digital kingdom on the ruins

Swedish anthropologist Sigrid Rausing went to Estonia in 1993, a new country that had become independent from the former Soviet Union two years ago, full of traces of the past and uncertain future. Actual imagination, reality seems to be completely non-existent. "Poor people desperately want to escape what is known as the Soviet past, but they only know how to stockpile food to ward off fear of the unknown and passively wait for the future to come," she wrote.

Thirty years later, the Estonia that greeted me is full of presents made up of the past and the future.

Carefully observe the streets of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, as if you have come to the future world. In the middle is the roadway, where free buses for Tallinn residents, auve tech self-driving buses and Bolt e-hailing vehicles tested on specific routes, share this lane with private cars; More common are the electric scooters of Bolt and Juul; on the sidewalk next to it, in addition to pedestrians walking, there is a narrow road about half a meter wide for the self-driving express car Starship robot to "walk". Estonia is the first country to legalize self-driving cars on public roads and to restructure roads for the testing and deployment of self-driving technology. From auve tech, Starship, to Bolt and Juul, which can be seen everywhere in Eastern European countries, these are Estonian start-ups.

For Estonians, digital governance and technological innovation are the most proud features of the country. Since independence in 1991, the Estonian government has introduced a series of nationwide digital reforms. The two most important of these are the popularization of digital identity (digital ID) and the promotion of digital education for all. The former provides the technical foundation for governing the country with technology, and the latter ensures the penetration rate.

Digital identity is the foundation of everything. In Estonia, children are given their own digital ID number at birth, and their electronic medical records are linked to this number. When they turn fifteen, they can receive a digital ID card with a photo. In 2002, the Estonian government learned from Finland and required every resident to apply for a digital identity of their own. Twenty years later, Finland's digital identity penetration rate is around 50%, and in Estonia, 99% of citizens already have digital identities.

The second major thing that the Estonian government has done after independence is to universalize digital education. In 1996, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who later became president and launched the "digital citizen" project, was Estonia's ambassador to the United States. He published an article in the newspaper saying, "There are 17,000 secondary school students in Estonia. We only need to provide 17,000 computers to enable our graduates to acquire a very useful new skill. In Estonia, It is not only college students who have received elite education who can use computers. If we can do this, our whole country can leap into the 21st century together. Such Estonia will definitely be different from what it used to be.”

His vision became reality. Estonia's Ministry of Education launched the Tiger Leap Program, relying on government funding and funding from people from all walks of life across the country, so that every primary and secondary school in Estonia was equipped with computers in early 2000. Erika Piirmets, an Estonian citizen who enrolled in 1999, found that computers are ubiquitous, from elementary school classrooms to libraries. This generation of Estonian young people have all grown up in the network environment.

Erika Piirmets, who is now the Estonian government's ambassador for digital transformation, greeted me on the ground floor of the E-Estonia building. Born in 1992, she grew up with the Republic of Estonia. Piirmets said that at the beginning of the implementation of digital identity, although the government issued one copy, the usage scenarios were very limited. Except for paying taxes, few people used it. It wasn't until banks and telecommunications companies joined in and used digital ID cards to replace the bank cards or telecom cards issued by them to verify user information that digital identities were popularized.

Today, Estonian residents can use their own digital ID number, plus two passwords (one private and one randomly generated), to log in to all government information including medical care, tax payment, election voting, salary and welfare information, etc. departments, and look at the data they generate in various areas of government—including healthcare, taxation, and more.

Piirmets says she files her taxes using the digital ID system, which takes just three minutes. "All income information has already been uploaded and synced, I just need to check for errors."

In Estonia, different government departments can only read the corresponding user information - for example, officials of the Ministry of Finance cannot read citizens' medical information. At the same time, Estonian residents can also choose to hide part of their information from anyone - such as hiding their psychological counseling history, so that even if family doctors have permission to read medical files, they cannot see the hidden information.

More importantly, the website contains a "data usage record file", which records the details of each time personal data is entered or read: including information such as when, which department, and operator. According to Piirmets, doctors with a medical license have the right to review patients' medical files, but if a doctor who does not see your doctor reads your medical information out of curiosity, it will leave traces on your data files. , and without justifiable reasons, the doctor's license to practice medicine will be revoked.

"Any action needs a justification, and our system is built on that tenet," Piirmets said. "Not only citizens need to log in with digital identities, but also public officials. Every action will leave a record."

Estonians don't trust the government, Piirmets said, but they can trust technology, which ensures that the government can be monitored. "The ownership of personal data belongs to the individual, and the government is just a container for storing data. I have the right to know what happened to my data. This is the same as once I generate data on social media like Facebook, the data belongs to Facebook. It is completely different. Because of the data file, I can trust that the government collects my data to serve me, and will not be used for profit or to monitor me.”

Resident data collected by various government departments is stored in a distributed data storage system called x-road. Both government systems and private companies can access the system through application programming interfaces (APIs) and send data requests to contact Resident personal information to the section they request. At the same time, another set of open source blockchain system is on top of it, which ensures that every step of the operation is traceable. Once the data behavior is recorded, it is irreversible and cannot be deleted.

Digital IDs are government-verified proof of personal identity, which is also useful for merchants. In Estonia, you don’t need bank cards, membership cards for various bookstores and movie theaters, or public transportation cards. These cards can be replaced by digital ID cards—as long as you authorize, merchants can access x-road through digital ID cards. Verify the identity of the natural person who swiped the card.

For Estonia, technocracy has a history to follow, and it is a matter of course. In the former Soviet Union, in order to prevent competition among countries, Stalin allocated their respective production fields for Eastern European countries, wireless electronics industry and computer industry, which were allocated to Estonia. This brought the best computer scientists and ample research funding in the Soviet era to Tatu University in Estonia. A rural school in Estonia became the first school in the Soviet Union to be equipped with a computer in 1965, and students at Estonia's Tartu University created the Juku computer, which was later widely used in Soviet schools in the 1980s. The alumni who graduated from Tatu University in the 1980s have now become the most important entrepreneurs and investors in this country. They understand technology, develop technology, and help the post-independence government carry out digital transformation. In the past 30 years, Estonia has paid off most of its national debts and joined the European Union. It is now the country with the fastest economic development and the highest per capita GDP among the 15 countries that became independent after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. Estonia has nurtured several tech unicorns, including Skype, which was later sold to Microsoft, and Wise, which was listed on the London Stock Exchange. In 2021, Bolt alone will bring an investment of 600 million euros to Estonia.

The "Digital Resident" project brings high tax returns to the Estonian government, but the investment is very low, because the technical support needed by digital residents—from data storage to digital government services—is already a part of Estonian society. The "Resident" project simply opens up these services to people around the world.

“We don’t have oil or gold, and we’re showing people these advantages of Estonia through our digital residency project,” Vaga told me. “If Elon Musk is thinking about where to start his next company, we want him to choose Estonia.” At the time, Musk hadn’t acquired Twitter.

4. When Ideals Meet Reality

Four years ago, Zhang Tao, who was still a graduate student in Shanghai, heard about the "Digital Resident" project and decided to try it out. The application form required to fill in the reason for the application. He wrote: "I am very enthusiastic about the blockchain industry and hope to go to Estonia for the next step of development." The application was approved. In January 2019, Zhang Tao came to Beijing for the first time. He took this opportunity to play around, ice skating in the Summer Palace, and went to the Estonian embassy in Beijing to collect his ID card. "Later, I went to Beijing more than a dozen times because of work, but I didn't have as much fun as that time." He recalled.

After getting his ID card, Zhang Tao opened an Estonian company non-stop, opened an account remotely at a local bank, and was very excited, "Because I have a career to start." But this identity and company did not bring him the expected results. benefit. He found that it is impossible to even open an account in an overseas digital currency exchange with just a digital chip card without a photo; and Estonia has strengthened the access requirements for digital currency companies after 2020, and digital currency trading licenses are not required. No matter how easy it is to obtain, Zhang Tao's company registered in Estonia is useless.

The partner who founded the company together went to Singapore to work on the NFT project, and Zhang Tao did not continue to cooperate with him. “I’ve been playing since 2017, and I’m considered a ‘little leek’. I’ve experienced this kind of skyrocketing and plummeting blockchain, and it’s quite uncomfortable, and I don’t want to make money like this again,” he said.

Now Zhang Tao works as a blockchain anti-money laundering engineer in a start-up company, providing technical support for the government's public security department. Dealing with the government in the blockchain circle, Zhang Tao is very aware of the restrictions on doing blockchain in China. He does not recommend friends who work on virtual currency projects to stay in China. "We have also encountered many cases, and the project itself has no problems. But for various reasons, they may be arrested, detained, and sentenced.”

"Doing blockchain in China now may have great risks except for compliance and supervision. If you can go to Singapore, Estonia or New York to apply for an entity, I think it will be much better than doing this in China." Zhang Zhang Tao said.

However, attracting blockchain practitioners is not part of the Estonian government's plan for "digital residents". On the contrary, Estonia is the first country in the European Union to introduce relevant laws to regulate the compliance of digital currency companies. According to Siim Sikkut, one of the founders of the "Digital Resident" project, values are not so reliable, and it takes a lot of money to actually accomplish something. He believes that the "digital residents" team has always been very pragmatic, which is the reason for the success of this project.

Sikkut ended his five-year term as the chief technology officer of the Estonian government in early 2022 and established a consulting company called "Digital Nation" (Digital Nation) to help countries in need complete the digital transformation of government affairs. On the day I met him in Tallinn, he was wearing a jumper that read "Enter e-Estonia". He has worn this dress in many public appearances.

The "Digital Resident" team discovered early on that the vision of "being a citizen of the world without being restricted by nationality or region" is difficult to become a reality.

"We have no way of disconnecting from the real world," Sikkut said. The "Digital Resident" project is restricted by international anti-money laundering laws. When connecting global residents to the Estonian digital society, we must be careful not to increase the risk of money laundering for other sovereign countries. At the same time, the international tax and financial system is still tied to the country in which the individual lives — and while Sikkut thought at the beginning of the project that this might loosen, it hasn’t. "It is impossible to break this system with Estonia alone. All we can do is to change the project and make it an extension of the actual country of Estonia." So, around 2017, the project team began to adjust the caliber, Instead of promoting the "digital resident" community as a "global village", they refer to becoming a "digital resident" as "a way of accessing Estonian government services".

More importantly, as more and more people become digital residents, those applicants who come simply because of their values and curiosity have not brought actual benefits to the project. "Those globalists never became paying customers. They were attracted by the idea, but they didn't open a company," Sikkut said. "This project, at the end of the day, is a government economic development project"—main The goal is to attract foreign investors to register companies in Estonia and generate taxes. Only when the project makes money can it better serve more digital residents.

The project also does not consider further immigration pathways for digital residents. Sikkut believes that while it is a good thing that more tech talents want to move to Estonia, it also deviates from the purpose of the project, "which is the responsibility of the country's immigration service".

Sikkut has a more realistic vision than a global village, and he wants the international tax system to be decoupled from the host country. "Now if I stay in Estonia for 183 days, I have to pay taxes for the whole year to this country. What about the remaining 182 days? If taxes can be collected according to the actual place of work, it will motivate more countries to create suitable talent inflows. The business environment attracts investors. Today it’s either one or zero.”

It's not that Zhang Tao has never thought about leaving China. He applied to Tallinn University of Technology, but failed the interview. Now he has also adjusted his expectations and chose to stay, "I want to do something (in China) that can make the blockchain recognized." Zhang Tao, who calls himself a "Bitcoin fan", also believes that digital currency is decentralized because of be free. "We all make money through Bitcoin. We certainly hope that Bitcoin can bring something different to our world. We all hope that one day in the future, shops can support Bitcoin direct offline payment without converting into legal currency."

5. The road to a new identity

According to statistics from the "Digital Resident" project, the average age of applicants from mainland China is 34 years old, younger than applicants from most other countries. They have experienced the economic take-off after China's reform and opening up and the capital market built from scratch, which is not dissimilar to the establishment and growth of Estonia, a young republic. Siim Sikkut, who has dabbled in Chinese political history, quotes Deng Xiaoping: "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat, right? In Estonia we also agree with this kind of pragmatism."

"Regardless of political views, we have the same pragmatic spirit," he added.

The day I arrived in Estonia was the first day Russia began bombing Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. The Tallinn City Hall building was wrapped in yellow and blue lights to show support for Ukraine. The Russian embassy is surrounded by an iron fence, covered with various posters and graffiti protesting or satirizing the Russian government.

Estonia has been annexed by strong neighbors twice in history: it was annexed by Tsarist Russia in the 18th century and became independent after the Russian "October Revolution"; it was annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II and became independent after the Soviet coup. Today, Estonia has nearly 30% of the residents of Russian origin, and Russian is also the most commonly used language after Estonian. But unlike other former Soviet states, Estonia is culturally closer to Finland, 84 kilometers across the Baltic Sea, and the Estonian language is more similar to Finnish. Although Estonia belongs to Eastern Europe in the traditional geographical concept, polls show that people of Estonian descent identify themselves more as Nordic.

This coincides with many applicants who want to escape the old order.

Kirill Soloviev, a tech entrepreneur from Russia who moved to Tallinn five years after applying for a "digital resident", told me that living in Estonia is like living in a parallel universe-this is Russia itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another look that can be. What he saw in Estonia, where the "power distance" between people is small - ordinary citizens have easy access to government officials, and there is low inequality in social relations - is in stark contrast to Russia's bureaucratic government . In the past 40 years, he has been used to commuting three hours a day in Moscow. Once the company has to deal with the government, it has to arrange special time to prepare documents to meet the requirements of various departments. But in Estonia, "want to do and do it There are basically no barriers between them."

The translation software company Soloviev founded in Estonia has 15 employees who work remotely across four time zones, and he is the only one who lives in Estonia. Compared with the noisy Moscow, he gradually fell in love with the quiet nights of Tallinn. “In Moscow, you and your neighbor’s houses are next to each other—this is the case in Russia. I don’t like it at all. Here, neighbors are only five meters apart. I don’t have to force myself to socialize.”

Soloviev first came to Estonia in the spring of 2015 to travel to Tallinn to collect a "digital resident" identity card. It was still the early days of the program and applicants had to come to Estonia in person to collect their cards. He recalled that Tallinn in April had just woken up from a long winter, and the old city with red tiles and white walls was blooming with flowers, as if walking out of an oil painting.

“It’s like going from a caterpillar to a butterfly,” Soloviev told me. "In 2015, I couldn't see myself in the cocoon clearly. Getting this blue chip card was the beginning of everything. In the cocoon, I completely changed myself." Every day after that, He is moving closer to a new identity: from moving to Tallinn, not being a Russian taxpayer, to now speaking out against the war.

In October 2022, when the Russia-Ukraine war was heating up, he accepted an interview with Estonian media and called on those Russians in Estonia to give up their support for Russia and become Estonian citizens. "That's the real me, not covered up by the color of my passport."

Yang Jingwen, a technology entrepreneur from Taiwan, also wants to leave the past. In 2016, he and his wife Lin Enjie applied for a "digital resident" in Taipei. The following March, they were all approved, and Lin Enjie became the first female digital resident from Taiwan.

Yang Jingwen had long wanted to leave Taiwan. On the one hand, Taiwan’s economic growth has slowed down since around 2010, which is not conducive to the development of start-up companies; but more importantly, Taiwan’s politics have made him unable to see the future. "(Taiwanese) don't like the national flag or the national anthem, but they don't change it. The constitution indirectly says that China is a part of Taiwan, but the reality is that Taiwan (maybe) will become a part of China," he said. You will feel sad, and that sorrow cannot be changed, and you will want to escape.”

After becoming a digital resident, he and his partners set up a remote company in Estonia from Taiwan. From this, he experienced Estonia's efficient government services and friendly entrepreneurial environment, which was very different from the "bureaucratic" Taiwanese government he had come into contact with; then, They took a short trip to Estonia together, where he felt comfortable in terms of food, prices and air; later, in the fall of 2017, he and his wife moved from Taipei with their six-month-old son and their Maltese dog. Coming to Tallinn.

Standing at the bus stop on the streets of Tallinn with his son after kindergarten, Yang Jingwen looked at a ten-story white residential building opposite and asked me, "Guess this is a Nordic building or a Soviet building?"

This off-white building with a height of more than ten floors has exquisitely carved curved balconies on the four corners of each floor. "It should be a Soviet building." I am sure that it is similar to the residential buildings in mainland China, although it is more refined.

Yang Jingwen said I was right. He then pointed out to me a Nordic building on the side of the station: a residential building of the same height with sharp edges and sharp lines, but half of the wall is covered by floor-to-ceiling windows.

He taught me how to tell the difference: "You just look at the size of the windows—the windows in Soviet buildings are always small, not in Nordic buildings."

It has been five years since they arrived in Estonia. Yang Jingwen and his wife are planning to apply for permanent residence, but they have not thought about whether they will be naturalized in the future. Estonia does not recognize multiple nationalities, and naturalization means giving up Taiwanese identity. "Growing up in Taiwan, studying in Taipei, looking for a job in Taipei after graduation, Taiwan is my hometown," Yang Jingwen did not think he could become an Estonian. "But my child doesn't. I want to give my child the choice not to be a Taiwanese, because being a Taiwanese is to be a Chinese in the future. (I) would wonder if the child would give him a different world."

Six, the end

On the eve of my trip to Tallinn, it took me about thirty minutes to submit an application for an Estonian “digital resident” and pay 100 euros online.

Is it worth it to pay for the vision? I think that if more people buy it, it may become a reality.

Over the years, the "Digital Resident" project has become the main way for the world to understand Estonia: According to the project review officially released at the end of 2018, when searching for Estonia on Google, more than 80% of the English search results are related to this project, although everyone The expectations for it are different - Chen Juncheng wants to talk to the world; Soloviev wants to wash away the old identity; Zhang Tao wants to use it to develop his career in the blockchain industry; Rubin wants to embrace a decentralized future.

It reminds me of Jules Romains' allegorical play Donogoo. In the play, a French geographer accidentally draws a non-existent town on a map of Brazil. He decides to make a mistake and publishes a newspaper article claiming that the town has gold flowing in its river and nearby undiscovered towns. Gold mines that have been mined. Investors from all over the world flocked here, and this place that didn't exist has really become a prosperous city. The French popular thinker Albert Jacquart wrote in his book that this story is convincing, "The activity of a group is produced by the existence of the group itself...Everyone has their own needs, these Needs give value to the products they need."

At the end of my trip to Estonia, when I was waiting at Tallinn Airport to return to New York, I received an email from the Estonian government: my application was approved.

More than a month later, I went to the Estonian embassy in New York, near the United Nations headquarters, to pick up my "digital resident" card package. Inside the black cardboard box, embossed in blue with the words "Welcome to Estonia's Digital Nation," lay a blue chip card with my name on it and a slim black reader. This is my new identity.

In Manhattan in December, the East River is cold and windy. I walked out of the embassy with a card bag, thinking that Tallinn had already had several snowfalls, as if I was also connected with these possible futures.

(Liu Xiaochen, Yang Jingwen, and Lin Enjie are pseudonyms)