Tu Sheng-Tsung: Amid the Data Request Controversy, No One Truly Cares About Governance Issues

'200,000 records a day, over a million sheets of paper'—this phrase instantly ignites public opinion not through verification, but by cramming an abstract number, which no one bothers to calculate, directly into the audience’s physical perception. To actually print one million A4 sheets, assuming 80-pound copy paper at approximately 0.11 millimeters per sheet, the stack would reach 110 meters high—taller than a football field and equivalent to a 36-story building. It would weigh about 5 metric tons, too heavy for a medium-sized truck to carry, and if laid flat, would cover 62,400 square meters—equal to nine football fields or nine Daqiu Dome grass fields. Once this image is conjured, the mundane phrase '200,000 data entries' is instantly overshadowed. Without understanding statistics, anyone can be startled purely by intuition—and being startled is precisely the intended effect of this tactic.

The problem, however, is that Jian Shupei herself has already refuted this premise. She stated that since the establishment of a digital platform during Ko Wen-je’s mayoral term, council data requests have been electronic, and responses are mostly delivered via electronic files. In reality, millions of physical sheets are never delivered to her office. The 'one million sheets' figure has always been a hypothetical calculation, not the actual number of paper documents received. If her statement is true, then the entire narrative of a 110-meter-high stack or land coverage equivalent to nine football fields never existed in reality. It is purely a scare tactic based on a scenario that may never have occurred. This context should be clarified when sharing such information—only presenting the sensational half is misleading.

On the other hand, Jian Shupei’s rebuttal also fails to address the core issue. Even if documents aren’t printed, is it reasonable to demand the processing of 200,000 records per day, with strict deadlines and requiring personal information to be redacted one by one? The workload itself is a separate issue from whether physical paper is used. Digitization only resolves the tangible image of paper; it does not solve the problem of overworked frontline staff burning midnight oil to meet demands. What Taipei City Government is now arguing about is no longer governance—it’s about who can produce more shocking numbers. The city government uses 'one million sheets of paper' to portray abuse of power, while the councilor retaliates by demanding a city-wide audit of five years of paper usage. Both sides are competing to create more sensational imagery, yet no one is seriously discussing how to establish reasonable standards for the scope, deadlines, and necessity of data requests. If this escalating numbers game continues, the next data request dispute will again be decided by metaphor, not by institutional frameworks.

*Author: Chair of the Department of Radio and Television at Ming Chuan University. Republished with permission from Ju Media.