Taipei, Taiwan – Opposition chief Cheng Li-wun and Chinese language President Xi Jinping have met in Beijing, the place each leaders said their opposition to Taiwan independence and expressed a need for a “peaceable” decision to the long-running dispute over the island’s future.
They posed for pictures on the Nice Corridor of the Folks and exchanged public remarks, along with holding their closed-door assembly.
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Cheng is the highest-ranking Taiwanese chief to satisfy Xi since President Ma Ying-jeou talked with the Chinese language chief in Singapore in 2015. They met once more in China two years in the past when Ma was a non-public citizen.
Each Cheng and Ma are members of the Kuomintang, the conservative-leaning Taiwanese political occasion that advocates for better engagement with China by Taiwan’s self-ruled democratic authorities.
Throughout her public remarks, Cheng harassed that Chinese language and Taiwanese leaders ought to work to “transcend political confrontation and mutual hostility”.
“By means of the unremitting efforts of our two events, we hope the Taiwan Strait will not grow to be a possible flashpoint of battle, nor a chessboard for exterior powers,” Cheng mentioned, in keeping with an English translation.
“As a substitute, it ought to grow to be a strait that connects household ties, civilisation and hope – an emblem of peace collectively safeguarded by Chinese language individuals on each side,” she mentioned.
Cheng’s remarks have been sprinkled with well-known Chinese language Communist Social gathering speaking factors, praising its success in eradicating absolute poverty to its purpose of reaching the “nice rejuvenation of the Chinese language nation.”
“Throughout their open-door assembly, Xi additionally emphasised Taiwan and China’s shared historical past and tradition, stating that “individuals of all ethnic teams, together with Taiwanese compatriots,” had “collectively written the wonderful historical past of China.”
“All little kids of China share the identical Chinese language roots and the identical Chinese language spirit. This originates from blood ties and is deeply embedded in our historical past – it can’t be forgotten and can’t be erased,” Xi mentioned.
He added that along with the KMT and different members of Taiwanese society, Beijing was able to “work for peace” throughout the Taiwan Strait.
Each leaders mentioned they oppose “international meddling” in Taiwan-China relations – a reference to US interference – whereas Cheng instructed that she would gradual Taiwan’s army construct up, in keeping with Wen-ti Sung, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s World China Hub.
“She talked concerning the ‘institutional association for conflict prevention,’ which was a euphemism for saying that beneath her management, the KMT wouldn’t be in search of a defence and deterrence-oriented strategy to conflict prevention,” he advised Al Jazeera.
The message, in brief, was that “Taiwan should decelerate on defence buildup and shopping for US arms,” Sung mentioned.
Taiwan’s army enlargement has been a hotly debated difficulty within the legislature, the place the KMT has for months blocked a $40bn particular funds to amass US weapons. The opposition occasion alleges that the defence invoice is just too massive and too imprecise. It provided a smaller $12bn different as a substitute.
Writing on Fb forward of the assembly, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Social gathering (DPP) wrote that the KMT continues to “intentionally keep away from cross-party negotiations” whereas delaying approval of the particular defence funds.
Lai mentioned that his authorities additionally helps peace, however not “unrealistic fantasies”. Regardless of guarantees of peace from Xi, China has steadily ramped up its army presence within the waters and airspace round Taiwan in recent times. Since 2022, China’s armed forces have had six rounds of multi-day live-fire army drills within the Taiwan Strait, the 180-kilometre large waterway dividing Taiwan from mainland Asia.
“Historical past tells us that compromising with authoritarian regimes solely sacrifices sovereignty and democracy; it is not going to deliver freedom, nor will it deliver peace,” Lai wrote on Fb.
China accuses the ruling DPP’s management of pushing a “separatist” agenda. The DPP advocates for a definite Taiwanese id and, over the previous decade, has tried to lift Taiwan’s profile on the world stage — which has provoked anger in Beijing.
The Chinese language management reduce off formal contact with Taipei shortly after the DPP got here to energy in 2016, though it continues to speak via completely different teams, together with the KMT.
That’s partly why Cheng’s journey to China has been considered with scepticism in some corners of Taiwan, significantly among the many ruling DPP.
Chatting with reporters after the assembly, Cheng sidestepped questions of whether or not she supported Taiwanese and Chinese language unification, however mentioned her important purpose was to hunt “reconciliation” primarily based on shared historical past and tradition.
Nonetheless, the KMT and the Chinese language Communist Social gathering haven’t all the time acquired alongside.
They fought a bloody civil conflict from the Twenties to the Forties throughout China’s republican period, solely pausing to battle the Japanese in the course of the Second World Warfare.
The KMT-led Republic of China authorities later retreated to Taiwan, a former Japanese colony, within the late Forties, vowing to sooner or later return to China. The battle was by no means totally resolved. The CCP continues to assert Taiwan as a province, and stays dedicated to annexing it sooner or later, peacefully or by pressure.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council – which units Taiwan’s coverage in direction of China – mentioned this week that Cheng’s speaking level that Taiwan and China are “one household” mischaracterises Taiwan’s sovereignty dispute as an inside disagreement fairly than one between two governments.
Whereas nonetheless formally often known as the Republic of China, Taiwan has undergone a cultural and political sea change since democratisation within the Nineties, accompanied by an increase in Taiwanese nationalism.
In 2025, a nationwide id survey by the Nationwide Chengchi College in Taiwan discovered that 62 per cent of respondents recognized as “Taiwanese”, up from 17.6 per cent in 1992, the primary 12 months of the survey.
The proportion of respondents who establish as “Taiwanese and Chinese language” has fallen from 46.4 per cent to 31.7 per cent over the identical interval, whereas respondents figuring out as “Chinese language” fell from 25.5 to 2.5 per cent.
