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

This article is the winning entry in the second season of "Presence·Nonfiction Writing Scholarship". "Presence" was launched by Matters Lab and the Renaissance Foundation to provide scholarships and editorial support to independent writers. You can follow the official website frontlinefellowship.io and Facebook to get the latest information on essay solicitations, lectures and other activities.

Author: Zhou Youyou Editor: Zhang Yan

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

From the end of 2014 to September 2022, more than 90,000 people around the world decided to invest 100 euros and "bought" a blue chip identity card from the small Baltic country Estonia. The card has the Estonian flag printed on it. The issuing authority is the Estonian government. It says "Digital Identity Card" and states "Electronic Use Only."

The identity obtained in exchange 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. However, through this card, the cardholder can remotely connect to the Estonian government and industrial and commercial networks, and enjoy the benefits of opening bank accounts, forming companies, and making financial payments. and other services that are basically the same as those for Estonian residents. Among 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 after Russia, Ukraine, Germany and Finland The country of import of residents is also the number one non-European country.

Multiple groups of Estonian digital residents who communicate in Simplified Chinese can be found on the social software Telegram and WeChat. Someone asked about the actual use of becoming a digital resident, and someone replied, "It's just a matter of fighting spirit" and "Spiritual immigration, anyway, the money is not much."

Most of the digital residents from China do not live in Estonia, and have never even set foot in this former Soviet republic and current EU member state, which borders Russia to the east and across the sea from Finland and Sweden. According to official statistics from 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 of Estonia. He opened an account remotely on Wise, a European online bank, and applied for a debit card - the purpose is very simple, "it can be used for overseas travel." This is the biggest use of digital residency for him at present.

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 lockdown in the spring gave him a real blow. He said that he was blinded by the short-term comfortable life in Shanghai in 2021 and failed to see the long-term restrictions of the system on the country's development, which "is bound to go downhill."

On the one hand, Liu Xiaochen said that he was disappointed with domestic policies - epidemic prevention is just a facade - "I don't want to be Chinese anymore", on the other hand, he said that he was "not interested in politics, I just want to make money." When we chatted, he was staying in a three-star hotel in Bangkok, paying more than 6,000 yuan a month for a room. The hotel "included internet, cleaning, and gym, and two bottles of water every day." He is active in the Bitcoin circle and is the founder of a decentralized NFT game community and software. His daily life is filled with work and fitness. He starts from the first meeting at 8 a.m. and is busy making money.

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

1. The vision of breaking down “national borders”

The project address of Estonia’s “Digital Resident” is on the second floor of a business building converted from an old factory in Tallinn, the capital city. The office retains the rough and mottled interior walls and drainage pipes of the factory, and the words "e-Residency" spelled out in blue neon tubes are fixed on the wall. The open office area is filled with rows of broadband monitors and standing desks.

The original intention of establishing the project in 2014 stemmed from a practical problem that the government urgently needed to solve: a considerable part of Estonia's basic services such as communications and banking are provided by Nordic companies, and the government wanted to provide these overseas entrepreneurs and investors with opportunities to set up businesses in Estonia. Branch offices to reduce operating costs of cooperation. "Digital Residents" will allow these people to have government-endorsed identity authentication in Estonia, set up Estonian enterprises through simple procedures, and smoothly access government services.

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

Because I work as a reporter for an English-language media, I learned about Estonia’s “Digital Resident” project in 2018. As a member of a group of people who leave their hometowns, every time I cross a national border and am questioned by border control at airports or highways, I can feel this constructed "border between countries" that does not exist in daily life. , became so specific. I am deeply attracted by the possible future offered by the "Digital Resident" project: in an ideal world order, "national borders" will no longer be the governing tool of sovereign states, and "citizenship" will be Tradeable, liquid, technology dependent, and sharing a common vision.

The global epidemic broke out in 2020. For a while, the world came to a standstill, and people were unable to travel and migrate. Citizens of other countries affected by various countries' policies of suspending flights and closing customs can still lobby the government to realize the possibility of family reunion, migration and business exchanges, but Chinese passport holders have no such way at all. In the context of rapid economic growth, having Chinese nationality not only does not allow individuals to enjoy the convenience of connecting with the world, but is also restricted in every aspect.

I work from home every day, and the "Digital Resident" webpage stays in my browser for a long time. When you open the website, a global map appears on a blue background, "Join us today!" - There are four application entrances on the homepage of the website. Every time I couldn't help but click on it, I couldn't make up my mind to fill out the application form: apart from a beautiful vision, what practical use do digital residents without residency rights have?

Two years later in the fall, I flew across the Atlantic and across the Baltic Sea to the birthplace of the “Digital Resident” project to see what this vision of crossing national borders looked like in reality.

This government department, which operates like a start-up company, has portraits of its target users posted on the walls of its offices: freelancers living in Spain, German entrepreneurs burdened by government procedures, people who still need to maintain business ties with the EU after Brexit. British businessmen - these people may not necessarily come to Estonia, but because of actual demand, they may register an Estonian company, which can bring considerable financial revenue to the country.

Although there are many attractive business environments around the world, in Estonia, as long as you have the status of a digital resident and do not require local employees, you can register a completely remote company. The annual maintenance fee starts at one or two hundred euros - which is less 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, an EU business entity status is 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 tax revenue of 24 million euros. Katrin Vaga, the project’s head of external relations, told me, “We want to popularize entrepreneurship. It’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s fast, and it can be done remotely.”

Among the few Chinese citizens who hold digital resident cards to open companies, there is Rubin in Shenzhen. He runs an Australian digital currency trading company, doing asset entry and exit, 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 commercial entity of the 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 Resident Community" told me that in the website-derived Chinese Telegram (Telegram) group he runs with about 130 people, a considerable number of people hope to obtain an overseas status by applying for "digital resident". Open unlimited bank accounts and conduct financial transactions; others want to expand overseas business and connect with the world, such as opening a company in Estonia. These are the two most common reasons.

For 32-year-old Chen Juncheng, this blue chip card from Estonia not only helped him open an overseas company, but also found his way out.

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 tightened its supervision of digital currencies, and domestic exchanges have closed down or left other countries. Chen Juncheng also had the idea of ​​​​leaving. He learned about the “Digital Resident” project through friends in the currency circle and decided to apply. One day in May 2022, he went back and forth from Shenzhen to Beijing - the location of Estonia's only embassy in mainland China - to get back his digital resident identity card. However, because of the discovery of new coronavirus infections in Beijing, he "It was closed the next day" after leaving.

In the spring of 2022, the collapse of South Korea's stablecoin Luna coin exacerbated Chen Juncheng's anxiety. He urgently needed to find an overseas entity for his blockchain company. "The United States has strict regulations, and Singapore will only get stricter. Estonia is within the EU economy and is friendly to Web3 entrepreneurship." 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 entrepreneur visa (startup visa) established by Estonia for start-up companies: If the company is deemed compliant and innovative by the Estonian government, he can obtain a short-term residence visa to travel in EU countries. He has started applying and, if approved, he will be able to live in Estonia for five years.

Chen Juncheng compared running away to the risk control of financial products. In order to avoid being "liquidated", this is something that "must and must be considered". "I insist on going abroad. If you don't have a domestic background (in China), you will be very passive once you return to the planned economy. The experience we have accumulated in the industry for so many years has no room to be used domestically."

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 experiencing China's control over digital currencies and three years of epidemic control, I asked him about the life he yearned for, and he replied: "At least, being able to talk to the world."

2. The libertarian shrug

At the office of Digital Residents in Tallinn, I was given a copy of the statistics. There have been three peak stages for Chinese citizens to join the "Digital Resident" project; each peak was 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 currency - about 90% of the world's Bitcoin transactions occurred in the mainland, and nearly half of the Bitcoins were mined by mines in China. The situation changed after the government ban. 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 Public Coin Sale) is defined as an illegal financial activity and financing activities through digital currency are prohibited. and require ongoing projects to cease trading. As soon as the "94 ban" came out, Huobi and OK Coin, the world's leading digital currency exchanges founded by Chinese people, 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, has shut down all transactions in China.

2017 was another year in which the market value of Bitcoin jumped sharply. Digital currency transactions that were not subject to government supervision led to a large amount of RMB flowing out of the country through exchanges. The " Financial Times" analysis article said, "Mainland's policy crackdown on digital currencies can be seen as the authoritarian government with unlimited power feeling the threat from digital currencies that are decentralized and unrestricted by central authority... It makes Ordinary people can make payments and investments without being regulated by the government.”

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

The second wave peaked in early 2020. At the end of 2019, the Chinese mainland government issued a series of signaling documents to further crack down on digital currencies . After the epidemic swept the world, Chinese citizens' enthusiasm for "digital residents" was rekindled. In 2020, about 170 million U.S. dollars flowed out of mainland China in the form of digital currency, which was about 53% higher than the previous year.

Bitcoin will usher in a new bull market in 2021. In September of that year, the Chinese government issued stricter restrictions prohibiting all trading and mining activities within the mainland. In the office of "Digital Resident" in Tallinn, data analyst Indrek Seppo pointed to the curve on the graph and told me that after more than a year of stability, in the last three months of 2021, the number of Chinese applicants has increased month by month. The third peak was 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 his relationship in the currency circle that he wanted to "run away"? He asked me: Why didn't he enter the currency circle only after he had the value of "running away"?

In October, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is about to enter winter. The yellow leaves are withering, and heavy clouds and rain fall from time to time. There are more colors when looking down than when looking up. In Tallinn’s Old Town, which retains its medieval architecture, I met Miao Zhicheng, the organizer of the “libertarian study group”—several digital residents mentioned him to me. Miao Zhicheng speaks multiple languages. He moved to Tallinn in 2011 for work and started mining in 2016. Now he is a partner of a fully remote start-up company, providing the underlying protocol of electronic payment systems for blockchain companies.

Miao Zhicheng took me through an arcade, up to a small building with red bricks and white walls, and to an empty room on the second floor. There were only a desk, a work chair and an unpacked computer. projector. He introduced to me that this was the activity room of the study club. The club gave lectures on taxation, exchanged experiences on digital currency, and also held movie screenings. At the last event, they screened a film of the same name based on the 1950s novel Atlas Shrugged , written by Ayn Rand, who influenced this generation of libertarians. They - they believe in no government, no taxes, free markets. More than fifty years after the novel was published, blockchain technology entered the public eye. Many people became followers of a decentralized transaction model that could replace the money-based capital operation system. The values ​​of the novel coincided with them. .

Miao Zhicheng pointed out to me the door number of the room. It says "Vabaduse Tuba" in Estonian, which translates to "Freedom Room". This is the name he gave to the activity room. He printed T-shirts to club members, with the image of American economist and libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard in the center. Rothbard believed that taxes were robbery and governments were thieves. The T-shirt also reads "Free Market, Anti-War" (Free Market, Anti-War). He gave me one too.

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

As early as 2018, Miao Zhicheng elaborated on the relationship between Bitcoin and libertarians on the company blog . He wrote, “Because of their disillusionment with centralized systems (especially governments), there has always been a group of people in history who want to completely change the way society operates. They are called ‘libertarians.’ They were the first to get involved 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" believe that blockchain technology can make decentralization possible. Become a reality and eventually replace the centralized organizational model.”

He continued: “The choice of decentralization 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. Decentralization 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 requires domestic resources in China, and immigration is not a goal that can be completed in the short term. But his status as a "digital resident" has meaning beyond reality for him. He feels that it coincides with his personal values: he believes in a "decentralized" future and feels that Estonia's digital governance will become a sovereign country in the future. development type. 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 is already here, it just hasn't become popular yet."

3. Building a digital kingdom on the ruins

Swedish anthropologist Sigrid Rausing arrived in Estonia in 1993. The new country, which had become independent from the former Soviet Union two years earlier, was in dire straits and was full of traces of the past and lack of concern for the future. Actual imagination, reality seems to not exist at all. She writes: "Poor people are eager to escape the past called the Soviet Union, but they only know how to store food to resist the fear of the unknown and wait passively for the future."

The Estonia that greeted me thirty years later was a present made up of the past and the future.

Looking closely at the streets of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, it feels like you have entered the future world. In the middle is a roadway, running free buses for Tallinn residents, as well as auve tech self-driving buses and Bolt e-hailing buses that are being tested on specific routes, sharing this lane with private cars; on the bicycle path next to it, there are more people than bicycles. The more common ones are electric scooters from Bolt and Juul; on the sidewalk next to it, in addition to pedestrians, there is a narrow path about half a meter wide for the self-driving courier Starship robot to "walk". Estonia is the first country to allow autonomous vehicles to legally travel on public roads and to renovate road structures for the testing and promotion of autonomous driving technology. From auve tech, Starship, to Bolt and Juul, which are ubiquitous in Eastern European countries, these are all Estonian start-ups.

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

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, the digital identity penetration rate in Finland is about 50%, and in Estonia, 99% of citizens already have digital identities.

The second major thing the Estonian government did after independence was digital education for all. In 1996, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who later became president and launched the "Digital Resident" project, was also Estonia's ambassador to the United States. He published an article in a newspaper and said, "There are 17,000 secondary school students in Estonia. We only need to provide 17,000 computers so that our graduates can acquire a very useful new skill. In Estonia, It’s not just college students who have received an elite education who know how to use computers. If we can do this, our entire country can leap into the 21st century and Estonia will never be the same.”

His vision became reality. The Estonian Ministry of Education launched the Tiger Leap Program. With government funding and support from people from all walks of life across the country, every primary and secondary school in Estonia was equipped with computers in the early 2000s. Erika Piirmets, an Estonian citizen who enrolled in school in 1999, discovered that computers are everywhere from primary school classrooms to libraries—this generation of Estonian young people have all grown up in an online environment.

Erika Piirmets, now the Digital Transformation Ambassador of the Estonian government, 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 everyone had one copy because the government issued it, the use scenarios were very limited. Except for paying taxes, very 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 telecommunications cards issued by them to verify user information that digital identity was promoted.

Now, Estonian residents can use their digital ID number, plus two passwords (one private and one randomly generated), to log into all government services including health care, tax payment, election voting, salary and benefit information, etc. departments, and view the data they generate across various government areas—including health care, taxation, and more.

Piirmets said she used the digital ID system to file her taxes, which only takes three minutes. "All the income information has been uploaded and synchronized, I just need to check it again to see if there are any errors."

In Estonia, different government departments can only access corresponding user information - for example, officials at the Ministry of Finance cannot access citizens' medical information. At the same time, Estonian residents can also choose to make some of their information invisible to anyone - such as hiding psychological consultation history, so that even if the family doctor has permission to read the medical file, he will not be able to see the hidden information.

More importantly, the website contains a "data usage record file" that records the details of each time personal data is entered or read: including when, which department, operator and other information. According to Piirmets, doctors with medical licenses have the authority to review patient medical files. However, if a doctor who does not treat you looks at your medical information out of curiosity, it will leave traces on your data files. Once reported, , and without justifiable reasons, this doctor will have his medical license revoked.

"Every action needs to be justified, and our system is built on this," Piirmets said. "Not only citizens need to log in with digital identities, but also public officials need to log in with digital identities. Every action will be recorded."

Piirmets said Estonians don't trust the government, but they can trust technology because technology ensures 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 happens to my data. This is the same as once I generate data on a social media like Facebook, the data belongs to Facebook. It’s completely different. Because there are data files, 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 the application programming interface (API) and issue data requests to access it. to the portion of the resident’s personal information they requested. At the same time, another open source blockchain system is built on top of it to ensure 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-validated personal identity verification, which can also be useful for merchants. In Estonia, you don’t need bank cards, membership cards for various bookstores and cinemas, or public transportation cards. These cards can all be replaced by digital ID cards - as long as you authorize them, merchants can access x-road through digital ID cards. , verify the natural person identity of the person who swipes the card.

For Estonia, technological governance has a history and is a natural thing. During the former Soviet Union, in order to eliminate competition between countries, Stalin allocated production areas to Eastern European countries. The wireless electronics industry and computer industry were allocated to Estonia. This brought the most top-notch computer scientists of the Soviet era and ample research funding to Estonia's Tatu University. A rural school in Estonia became the first school in the Soviet Union to be equipped with computers in 1965. Students at Estonia's Tatu University created the Juku computer in the 1980s that was later widely used in Soviet schools. Alumni who graduated from Tatu University in the 1980s are now the country's most important entrepreneurs and investors. They understand technology, develop technology, and help the post-independence government carry out digital transformation. In the past thirty years, Estonia has paid off most of its national debt 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 collapse of the former Soviet Union. Estonia has nurtured several technology unicorns, including Skype, which was later sold to Microsoft, and Wise, which was listed on the London Stock Exchange. In 2021, Bolt alone brought 600 million euros of investment to Estonia.

The "Digital Resident" project brings high tax returns to the Estonian government, but low investment. This is because the technical support required by digital residents - from data storage to digital government services - is already part of Estonian society. "Digital residents" The "resident" program simply opens these services to people around the world.

“We don’t have oil or gold, and we’re making these advantages of Estonia visible to everyone through the Digital Residents project,” Vaga told me. “If Elon Musk is thinking about where to build his next company, we hope he chooses Estonia." At that time, Musk had not yet acquired Twitter.

4. When ideal meets 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 asked for the reason for the application. What he wrote was: "I am very keen on 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 and took the opportunity to have some fun, including skating in the Summer Palace and going to the Estonian Embassy in Beijing to get his identity card. "Later, I went to Beijing more than a dozen times for work, but I never had as much fun as I did that time." He recalled.

After getting the identity card, Zhang Tao opened an Estonian company non-stop and opened an account remotely at a local bank. He was very excited, "because I have a career to start." However, this identity and company did not bring him the expected results. benefit. He found that he could not even open an account at an overseas digital currency exchange with just a digital chip card without a photo; and Estonia has strengthened its 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 of no use.

The partner who founded the company together went to Singapore to work on the NFT project, but Zhang Tao did not continue to cooperate with him. "I have been playing since 2017, and I can be considered a 'little leek'. I have experienced the sudden rise and fall of the blockchain, which is quite uncomfortable. I don't want to make money like this again," he said.

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

"To do blockchain in China now, except for compliance and supervision, there may be great risks. 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 domestically." Zhang Tao said.

However, absorbing blockchain practitioners is not part of the Estonian government’s plan for “digital residents.” On the contrary, Estonia is the first country in the EU to introduce relevant laws to implement compliance controls on digital currency companies. According to Siim Sikkut, one of the founders of the "Digital Resident" project, values ​​are not that reliable, and it takes a lot of money to really accomplish something. He believes that the "Digital Resident" team has always been very pragmatic, which is the reason for the success of this project.

Sikkut ended his five-year term as chief technology officer of the Estonian government in early 2022 and established a consulting company called "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 emblazoned with the words “Enter e-Estonia.” He wore this dress on many public occasions.

The "Digital Resident" team discovered very early on that the vision of "being able to become a global citizen regardless of nationality or geographical restrictions" is difficult to become a reality.

"We can't escape the real world," Sikkut said. The "Digital Resident" project is restricted by international anti-money laundering laws. When connecting global residents to Estonia's digital society, we must be careful not to increase money laundering risks for other sovereign countries. At the same time, the international tax and financial systems are still tied to the country in which an individual is located—although at the beginning of the project, Sikkut thought that these ties might be loosened, but it turned out not to be the case. "It is impossible for Estonia alone to break this system. 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 its caliber. They no longer promote the "digital resident" community as a "global village", but call becoming a "digital resident" "a way to access Estonian government services."

More importantly, as more and more people become digital residents, those applicants who come just because of their values ​​and curiosity do not bring actual benefits to the project. "Those globalists never became paying customers. They were attracted to the idea, but they didn't open a company." Sikkut said, "This project, ultimately, is a government economic development project."—— The main goal is to attract foreign investors to register companies in Estonia and generate tax revenue. Only when projects make money can they better serve more digital residents.

The project also does not consider providing further immigration pathways for digital residents. Sikkut believes that while it’s good that more tech talent wants to move to Estonia, it also defeats the purpose of the project, “which is the responsibility of the country’s immigration agency.”

Sikkut has a more realistic vision than building a global village. He hopes that the international tax system can be decoupled from the host country. "Now if I am 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 based on the actual place of work, it will encourage more countries to create industries suitable for the inflow of talents. The business environment is all about attracting investors.”

It’s not like Zhang Tao 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, "because he wants to do something (in China) that can make the blockchain recognized." Zhang Tao, who calls himself a "Bitcoin fan", also believes that digital currencies are decentralized. 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, stores can support direct offline payments with Bitcoin without the need to convert it 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, which is younger than applicants from most other countries. They have experienced China's economic take-off after 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, quoted Deng Xiaoping as saying: "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat, right? We also agree with this pragmatism in Estonia."

"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 Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. 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, which is covered with various posters and graffiti protesting or satirizing the Russian government.

Estonia has experienced two annexations by powerful neighbors in its 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, nearly 30% of Estonian residents are of Russian origin, and Russian is also the most widely circulated language after Estonian. But unlike other former Soviet countries, Estonia is culturally closer to Finland, which is 84 kilometers away across the Baltic Sea, and the Estonian language is also relatively similar to Finnish. Although Estonia belongs to Eastern Europe in the traditional geographical concept, polls show that Estonian citizens identify themselves more as Northern Europeans.

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

Kirill Soloviev, a technology entrepreneur from Russia, moved to Tallinn five years after applying for a "digital resident". He told me that living in Estonia was like living in a parallel universe - that was Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another way to be. What he saw in Estonia is that the "power distance" between people is small - ordinary citizens have easy access to government officials, and the degree of inequality in social relations is low - which is in sharp contrast to the Russian bureaucratic government . Over the past forty years, he has been accustomed to a three-hour commute in Moscow every day. Once the company wants to deal with the government, special time must be allocated to prepare documents to respond to the requirements of various departments. But in Estonia, "what you want to do and do it There is basically no barrier between them."

The translation software company Soloviev founded in Estonia has 15 employees working remotely across four time zones, and he is the only one who lives in Estonia. Compared to the noisy Moscow, he slowly fell in love with the quiet nights in Tallinn. "In Moscow, your house and your neighbor's house are right next to each other - it's like this in Russia, and I don't like it at all. Here, neighbors are only called neighbors if they are five meters apart. I don't have to force myself to socialize."

Soloviev first came to Estonia in the spring of 2015, in order to go to Tallinn to receive a "digital resident" identity card. It was still the early days of the program, and applicants had to come to Estonia in person to pick up the card. 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 it had stepped 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 clearly in the cocoon. Getting this blue chip card was the beginning of everything. I completely changed myself in the cocoon." Every day after that, He has been moving closer to a new identity: from moving to Tallinn, no longer a Russian taxpayer, to now speaking out against the war.

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

Also wanting to leave the past behind is Yang Jingwen, a technology entrepreneur from Taiwan. In 2016, he and his wife Lin Enjie applied for "Digital Resident" together in Taipei. In March of the following year, 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 prevent him from seeing the future. "(Taiwanese people) don't like the national flag or the national anthem, but they won't change it either. The constitution indirectly says that China is part of Taiwan. The reality is that Taiwan (may) become part of China," he said. "If you are smarter, You will feel sad, and if the sadness cannot be changed, 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, and everything here made him feel comfortable, from the food, prices to the air. Later, in the fall of 2017, he and his wife moved from Taipei with their six-month-old son and their Maltese dog. Come to Tallinn.

Standing at a bus stop on the street in Tallinn while holding his son after class in kindergarten, Yang Jingwen looked at a white residential building with more than ten floors opposite and asked me: "Can you guess whether this is a Nordic building or a Soviet building?"

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

Yang Jingwen said I guessed it right. He then pointed me to a Nordic building near the station: a residential building of similar height with sharp edges and clear lines on the exterior wall, but half of the wall was covered by floor-to-ceiling glass windows.

He taught me how to tell the difference: "Just look at the size of the windows - the windows in Soviet buildings are always very small, but not in Nordic buildings."

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

6. Ending

On the eve of my trip to Tallinn, I spent about thirty minutes submitting the application for Estonia’s “Digital Resident” and paid 100 euros online.

Is it worth paying for a vision? I think if more people buy it, it might become a reality.

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

This reminds me of the allegorical play "Donogoo" by playwright Jules Romains. In the play, a French geographer accidentally drew a non-existent town on a map of Brazil. He decided to make amends and published an article in a newspaper, claiming that the town's rivers were filled with gold and that there were unexplored towns nearby. Mined gold mines. Investors from all over the world flocked to this place, and this non-existent place literally became a prosperous city. French popular thinker Albert Jacquard wrote in his book that this story makes people believe that "the activities of a group are generated by the existence of the group itself... Everyone has their own needs, these Demand gives value to the products they need.”

When my trip to Estonia was about to end and I was waiting at Tallinn Airport to fly back 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, located near the United Nations Headquarters, to receive my "Digital Resident" card package. On the black hard-shell carton, "Welcome to Estonia's Digital Nation" is printed in blue lettering, and inside lies a blue chip card with my name engraved on it and a slim black card reader. This is my new identity.

It’s December in Manhattan, and the wind is freezing on the East River. When I walked out of the embassy with my card holder in hand, I thought that Tallinn had snowed several times, and it seemed that I was connected to these possible futures.

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