Ping Xu is the founder of UBI Taiwan. From concert pianist in the USA to translator for immigrants, passing through living on the street, Xu explains to us in this interview for the documentary “RBUI, our right to live” the proposal of a worldwide movement that defends a basic income.
Video: Álvaro Orús and Mayte Quintanilla.
She has lived for the past 17 years in the United States. Working as a translator on medical and legal issues for immigrants has allowed her to understand that the system is not based on helping people and that everything is based on mistrust, including the so-called “welfare state” and the assumption that people are going to cheat and are lazy. So, she understands that a basic income is the only thing that can satisfy human needs.
She is dedicated to trying to demonstrate to the Taiwanese government that a basic income is possible and affordable for the entire population and denounces the inhumane conditions of employment experienced by Asians. She proposes to generate a global movement for the defence of a basic income, starting in Asia, where the worst working conditions are experienced, according to Xu.
Ping Xu, who arrived and lived well as a concert pianist in the United States, ended up living on the streets after her husband suffered a serious illness, before working in the immigration field. Her own experience allow her to understand that the problems we face are global and therefore the answer has to be global: the creation of a worldwide movement for basic income, so that it can be truly universal, something she sees as feasible to achieve thanks to technological advances.
