Xi Jinping has told the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party that Beijing can never accept Taiwanese independence but welcomed any other proposals to improve relations across the Taiwan Strait.
He said the goal was to ensure that people on both sides lived better lives, offering to expand access to the vast market in mainland China for Taiwanese agricultural, fishery and other products.
“Compatriots on both sides of the Strait are all Chinese – people of one family who want peace, development, exchange and co-operation,” he said.
“The shared roots and spirit of the Chinese people are carried in our blood, grounded in history, and embedded in our hearts – something that cannot be forgotten or erased.”
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Xi was speaking in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square at the start of a meeting with Cheng Li-wun, the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT). It was the first such meeting with a serving leader of the Taiwanese party for a decade but Cheng made clear that she wanted to reset the cross-strait relationship.
“Although people on both sides of the strait live under different systems, we should respect one another and also move toward one another. I believe that peace is a shared moral principle and value across the strait,” she said.
“I hope that through the tireless efforts of your party and ours, the Taiwan Strait will no longer be a focal point of potential conflict, nor will it become a chessboard for external intervention. The Taiwan Strait should be a strait that connects kinship, civilisation, and hope, and a symbol of peace jointly safeguarded by Chinese people on both sides.”
The KMT fought a civil war against the communists before fleeing before Mao Zedong’s victory in 1949 to Taiwan from where it claimed that its Republic of China was the legitimate government of the whole of China. The Communist Party claims that the People’s Republic of China is the sole legitimate government for all of China, a position reflected in the One China policy accepted by all but a handful of United Nations member states.
Taiwan’s president William Lai, whom Beijing regards as a separatist, appeared to condemn Cheng’s meeting with Xi as he warned against compromising with the mainland.
“We hold ideals about peace, but they are not unrealistic fantasies; history shows that compromising with authoritarian regimes comes at the cost of sovereignty and democracy – it will not bring freedom, nor will it bring peace,” Lai said.
Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lacks a majority in Taiwan’s legislature and the KMT have been blocking an eight-year, €40 billion defence budget. The opposition party said it backed increased defence spending but was proposing a more modest €12 billion package.
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