Wang Hongwei was slapped in the face for questioning the Mainland Affairs Council, and the DPP legislator demanded an apology

Kuomintang Legislator Wang Hongwei recently used AI to generate photos to question, questioning that the Mainland Affairs Council spent 980,000 yuan to make the office look like a European palace, and the photos were fake. In this regard, DPP legislator Xu Zhijie said today (19th) that legislators supervising the government should seek verification in advance, but Wang Hongwei used trumped-up things to frame the government into injustice and should apologize immediately.

On the 18th, the Internal Affairs Committee of the Legislative Yuan reviewed the 115th annual budget proposal sent by the Mainland Affairs Council to the Taiwan-Hong Kong Policy Advancement Association, and invited Chairman Qiu Chuizheng of the Mainland Affairs Council to prepare questions. Among them, Wang Hongwei showed an AI picture when she took the stage and questioned that the Mainland Affairs Council, despite budget constraints and Taiwan and Hong Kong business almost at a standstill, actually spent nearly one million yuan this year to decorate a 10-square-meter multi-functional conference room for the Taiwan-Hong Kong Initiative. How can it be called poor every day?

Qiu Chuizheng responded at the time that the conference room is a shared space with the Taiwan-Hong Kong Policy and Development Association. There are frequent exchanges between Taiwan and Hong Kong and Macao. In addition to continuing to cooperate with local governments every year to organize Hong Kong residents’ residence and settlement briefings, Taiwan also had a trade volume of 71.8 billion US dollars with Hong Kong last year, and Hong Kong people visited Taiwan for up to 1.3 million people, second only to Japan in several categories.

Faced with Wang Hongwei's questioning, Lai Xiu-ru, CEO of the Taiwan-Hong Kong Initiative, directly opened the media to visit the conference room and clarified that the conference room was not as luxurious as shown in the picture. She also criticized Wang, who is also a journalist, but used AI to create fake pictures to depict the conference room as palace-style. It was very inappropriate and lacked ethics and professionalism to directly bring it to the National Assembly for questioning without first asking the Mainland Affairs Council or the Taiwan-Hong Kong Initiative.

Xu Zhijie said in a self-recorded video this morning that it is really inappropriate to ask questions with fake pictures. Legislators' questions are to supervise the government and must seek verification in advance. They cannot use fabricated things to frame the government for injustice. Member Wang Hongwei should apologize to the Mainland Affairs Council.