The leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party arrived in China today, making her the first outgoing party leader to visit the country in a decade.
Cheng Li-wun, who took over as chairman of the Kuomintang (KMT) last year, said she “gladly accepted” President Xi Jinping’s invitation to visit and hoped to be a “bridge for peace.”
Beijing cut off some communications with Taiwan after Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party became president in May 2016, citing Tsai’s refusal to endorse the concept of a single Chinese nation.
Cheng is expected to meet Xi during the final leg of his six-day trip, which will pass through the cities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing.
Although the KMT has traditionally enjoyed warm ties with China, Cheng’s eagerness to visit contrasts with his predecessors’ more cautious approach to cross-strait relations, some analysts say.
His trip comes amid growing skepticism toward the United States in Taiwan, “largely due to [Donald] Trump’s mixed signals on his Taiwan policy and the Middle East conflict,” says William Yang, a Northeast Asia analyst at the nonprofit think tank International Crisis Group.
“Cheng sees this as an opportunity for her to present herself as a political leader who can maintain cross-strait exchanges and potentially reduce cross-strait tensions,” Yang said.
China considers autonomous Taiwan to be a breakaway province that will eventually become part of the country, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this.
But many Taiwanese consider themselves part of a distinct nation.
Although the United States maintains formal ties with Beijing rather than Taiwan, for decades it remained the island’s largest arms supplier. In recent years, Trump has said Taiwan should pay the United States for its defense against China.
Last week, a bipartisan U.S. delegation visited Taipei, urging Parliament to pass a special $40 billion defense spending budget. The proposal is currently blocked in parliament dominated by the opposition.
Xi’s invitation to Cheng comes weeks before his meeting with Trump, who is scheduled to visit Beijing on May 14-15.
“Beijing wants a cordial meeting with Taiwan’s opposition to undermine the case for defense cooperation between the United States and Taiwan,” says Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at the Taiwan Center at the Australian National University.
This will then allow China to focus on “making trade deals” with the United States during Trump’s visit, rather than resolving cross-strait issues, Sung says.
For Cheng and the KMT, this could be politically beneficial in the run-up to Taiwan’s local elections later this year.
Although she began her political career as an advocate of independence, Cheng has in recent years attempted to build a reputation as a peacebuilder.
She is “trying to bridge the gap between the United States and China… to strengthen its leadership position while highlighting Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s failure to resume relations with the Chinese side,” said Yang of the International Crisis Group.
However, in Taiwan, Cheng’s conciliatory stance with Beijing proved unpopular, says political scientist Chong Ja-Ian of the National University of Singapore.
“Many see Cheng as a fair-weather politician, an unprincipled opportunist and a politician who cares about her own position more than anything else,” Chong says.
“This is why polls show little confidence in her.
“It also means she is willing to negotiate,” adds Chong. “Who benefits and to what extent are the big questions.”