A rundown of Weng Hsiao-ling's controversies: calling herself Chinese, cutting budgets for the disadvantaged, and contentious questioning

Aug 23, 2026

Kuomintang at-large legislator Weng Hsiao-ling has been mired in controversy since taking office, with everything from her remarks to her budget cuts drawing strong pushback from civil society groups and the arts community — bad news for both her personal image and the KMT.

  • She has repeatedly declared in public that "I am Chinese," even describing an Olympic badminton gold medal as "the pride of the Chinese people," prompting even her own cousin to publicly denounce her.
  • She proposed cutting and freezing the Presidential Office's classified state affairs fund, which led to the cancellation of orders for 15,000 Mid-Autumn Festival gift boxes from 37 sheltered workshops nationwide, drawing sharp condemnation from the Parents' Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, Taiwan.
  • She called the culture budget "feed for the blue birds," pushing the Ministry of Culture's publicity budget down to zero and freezing and cutting funding for the Public Television Service.
  • She spearheaded an amendment to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act raising the threshold for constitutional court rulings, which — combined with the KMT-TPP blockade of confirmation votes on nominees — effectively brought the Constitutional Court to a standstill.
  • She proposed deleting the penalty provisions barring retired generals from attending political events in China, drawing accusations of selling out the country and prompting fellow KMT legislators to withdraw their signatures one after another.

Outlook: She insists that "the innocent have nothing to fear" and says she will not stop exercising oversight. The controversy is unlikely to die down any time soon, and her future proposals are expected to keep touching off clashes.

← Latest · Archive