Taiwanese opposition leader Cheng Li-wun has been in China all week on a self-described 'peace mission,' and met President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday.CTI/Reuters
Taiwan’s future lies with China, President Xi Jinping said Friday, as he hosted Taiwanese opposition leader Cheng Li-wun in Beijing, his first summit with a high-level politician from the self-ruled island in a decade.
Ms. Cheng, who was elected Kuomintang chairwoman late last year, has been in China all week on a self-described “peace mission,” as she attempts to woo voters back in Taiwan with a promise of stability if they reject the ruling, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party in favour of the KMT.
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory and once fought a bloody civil war against the KMT, ending the Republic of China’s control of the mainland, has in turn rolled out the red carpet for Ms. Cheng, culminating in the meeting on Friday with Mr. Xi.
China will 'absolutely not tolerate' independence for Taiwan, Xi told the island's opposition leader on Friday.
Reuters
“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one Chinese nation,” Mr. Xi said. “All compatriots yearn for peace and tranquility across the strait, for the improvement and growth of cross-strait relations, and for a better life.”
Ms. Cheng said peace was a “common goal” and both Taipei and Beijing should work toward a “systemic solution to prevent and avoid war.”
The KMT has framed Ms. Cheng’s meeting with Mr. Xi as following on from a historic summit between the Chinese leader and Taiwan’s then-president Ma Ying-jeou in 2015. Under KMT leader Mr. Ma, Taipei moved much closer economically to Beijing, and that meeting, the first between the leaders of the People’s Republic of China and the ROC since the end of the Chinese Civil War, remains a high point in friendly relations across the Taiwan Strait.
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Fears of Chinese encroachment sparked a backlash in Taiwan, however, which eventually brought DPP leader Tsai Ing-wen to power. After Ms. Tsai won the presidency in 2016, Beijing cut off relations with Taipei, and has grown increasingly hostile in the decade since. Chinese hopes that the KMT would regain the presidency were dashed in 2024 when the DPP’s Lai Ching-te won easily, in part on a message of standing up to China.
“The KMT sells this idea that we’re the ones that can create a peaceful strategy with Beijing,” said Lev Nachman, an assistant professor at National Taiwan University. “You’re going to see the KMT holding up this meeting between Cheng and Xi as proof that they can deliver, while the DPP will point to it and say this is what’s going to happen if we lose.”
In a statement Friday, Mr. Lai said, “history tells us that compromising with authoritarian regimes only comes at the cost of sovereignty and democracy and will not bring freedom or peace.”
The DPP has denounced Ms. Cheng for travelling to China at a time when her party is holding up the passage of a defence budget that would see Taiwan buy billions of dollars of U.S. arms.
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Beijing strongly opposes such transfers, and Mr. Xi is expected to bring up the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump when the latter travels to China next month. The potential for improved ties with Taiwan under a prospective KMT government could support Mr. Xi’s assertion that it is the DPP, rather than Beijing, that is the main driver of current cross-strait tensions.
“Taiwan independence is the arch-criminal in undermining peace in the Taiwan Strait. We will never tolerate or condone it,” Mr. Xi said Friday.
China’s message of peace was undercut somewhat this week by live-fire exercises staged by the People’s Liberation Army in the Yellow Sea, and continuing incursions by Chinese planes into Taiwanese airspace. Speaking Thursday, Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense, said the PLA will “resolutely crush the secessionist delusions of Taiwan independence.”
Despite this, Mr. Nachman said the “silver lining,” even for critics of Ms. Cheng’s visit, “is that there are people in the PRC who still think it’s possible to find a way through this with diplomatic means.”
James Chen, an international relations scholar at Taipei’s Tamkang University, said it was notable that both Mr. Xi and Ms. Cheng “emphasized the importance of peace and dialogue.”
“The Cheng–Xi meeting also signals to the international community that stability across the Taiwan Strait remains achievable,” he said.
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Despite long-standing fears of a devastating war over Taiwan, the peaceful status quo has held firm for almost eight decades, and the U.S. recently assessed that China is not prepared or willing to launch an invasion in the near future, in part due to sweeping purges by Mr. Xi of the PLA’s leadership.
While Taiwanese voters are more mindful than anyone of the need to avoid war, the vast majority do not support any loss of autonomy let alone full annexation by Beijing, and it remains to be seen how Ms. Cheng’s visit to China will resonate back home. Even within the KMT, she has faced criticism for being too soft on China, which could grow should her stridently anti-independence stance fail to connect with the public.
“Not everyone in the KMT is on board with Cheng Li-wun here,” said Mr. Nachman. “There are very clear divisions in the party.”