The leader of Taiwan’s biggest opposition party will visit Beijing next week at the invitation of Xi Jinping, the first such trip in a decade.
Cheng Li-wun, leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), said she had accepted Xi’s invitation gladly, adding that her visit would show the two sides “are not destined for war”.
Cheng has often expressed her willingness to visit the mainland and she said she hoped to work with the Chinese Communist Party to improve cross-strait relations.
“We must firmly pursue a path of peace for the sake of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, regional stability and the wellbeing of future generations,” she said.
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China’s news agency Xinhua said Cheng will visit Shanghai and the eastern province of Jiangsu as well as Beijing. The last sitting KMT leader to visit mainland China was Hung Hsiu-chu, who met Xi in 2016.
News of Cheng’s visit comes as her party is resisting Taiwan president William Lai’s proposal for an extra $40 billion (€34.9 billion) to buy arms from the United States. The KMT said it supported moves to strengthen Taiwan’s defence but argues that the sum Lai is demanding is too much and would come at the cost of public services.
The visit is set to come a month before Donald Trump is due to visit China after he postponed a trip planned for this week because of the war in Iran. Trump has approved huge arms sales to Taiwan, despite Xi’s warning in a phone call last month that the US president should handle such sales with “utmost caution”.
The KMT fought a civil war against the Communists before fleeing to Taiwan when Mao Zedong prevailed and established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek claimed his Republic of China based in Taiwan was the lawful government of the entire territory of China.
Although Taiwan is a self-governing island, Beijing regards it as part of the territory of the PRC and only a handful of states have diplomatic relations with Taipei, although many have other political and economic links with it.
The KMT does not favour reunification with the mainland but enjoys a closer relationship with Beijing than other Taiwanese parties, particularly Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Beijing regards as separatists.
In 1992, a few years after Taiwan became a democracy, Beijing and Taipei reached an informal consensus under which both sides agreed there was one China but they disagreed about what that meant. Cheng has said this “1992 consensus” should form the basis of relations between Taipei and Beijing.
A former political talkshow host, Cheng was once a member of the DPP but is now its fiercest critic, accusing Lai of threatening Taiwan’s democratic institutions. Whereas Lai stresses Taiwan’s distinct identity, Cheng invokes its shared heritage with the mainland and she has long expressed a wish to meet Xi.
Speaking to the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents’ Club last week, Cheng said she believed such a meeting would carry a “significant symbolic meaning” and could be a foundation for peaceful cross-strait relations. And she insisted closer relations between Taipei and Beijing did not require Taiwan to be hostile towards the US.
“In terms of the overall narrative, the KMT has long maintained very good relations with the United States. This does not affect our desire to improve relations with the mainland,” she said.
“There is no contradiction between the two, and there is no need to choose one over the other. Why does improving relations with mainland China have to mean being less pro-American?”
