Chine
se leader Xi Jinping is set to hold rare talks with former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who supports closer ties with China. The meeting is expected to be politically symbolic, as it is the first time a former Taiwanese president has been hosted by China's top leader in Beijing since Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to Taipei in 1949. KMT Chairman Eric Chu hopes the meeting can adhere to the basic tone set during their talks in Singapore nearly nine years ago and can continue to lay a better foundation for future cross-strait exchanges.
The reunion also highlights the widening political divide across the Taiwan Strait and how Xi's aggressive posture toward Taipei has driven more Taiwanese away from China. This shift was underscored in January when Taiwanese voters shrugged off warnings by China and elected Lai Ching-te, who has long faced Beijing's wrath for championing Taiwan's sovereignty. Since then, Beijing has poached another of Taipei's dwindling diplomatic allies and ramped up patrols around Taiwan's frontline islands.
Ma's meeting with Xi coincides with a frenetic week of diplomatic activity in Washington, where President Joe Biden will host the first-ever leaders' summit between the US, Japan, and the Philippines. Joint concerns over China's increasing assertiveness under Xi, including toward Taiwan, are a key driver of that summit.
Preconditions
Unlike the KMT, the DPP rejects Beijing’s precondition for official talks – an agreement under which both sides accept there is “one China,” with their own interpretations on what that means.
Official communication is unlikely to resume for Lai, who has vowed to follow Tsai’s cross-strait policies. Beijing has repeatedly rebuked Lai’s offer for talks and denounced him as a dangerous separatist and “troublemaker.”
But by fixating on Ma, who has been out of office for years and wields little power to shape Taiwan’s political reality, Beijing may be revealing “its inability to find or cultivate another Taiwanese political figure of comparable stature who is willing to play dove toward Beijing today,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a Taiwan-based fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
Beijing’s messaging
Former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou is becoming a frequent visitor to the Chinese mainland, following a 12-day trip across the Taiwan Strait last year. This year's visit coincides with Qingming Festival, a traditional time for paying tribute to deceased family members and worshiping ancestors, and comes just weeks before Lai's inauguration as Taiwan's president. Beijing is using the meeting to highlight shared cultural roots between Taiwan and China and exert pressure on Taiwan's next administration.
The credibility and durability of Beijing's carrots are being underscored, signaling to political leaders that befriending Beijing is a worthwhile long-term investment. The carefully curated footage of the talks, expected to reach millions of homes on prime-time television news in China, serves as a message to the Chinese public that unification with Taiwan is still possible despite the DPP's historic election victory. For Beijing, Ma's visit is a useful way of assuring its domestic audience that Taiwan has not lost its hearts and minds, and that there are cultural and historical connections that bind them.
‘A journey of peace’
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou has embarked on a personal trip to China, where he has received widespread coverage from Chinese state media. He visited Guangzhou, where he attended a memorial honoring Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China. In Shaanxi, he attended a ceremony honoring the Yellow Emperor and urged Taiwanese youth to remember the roots of Chinese culture and nation. On the Great Wall in Beijing, he sang a Chinese patriotic song about the fight against Japanese invaders during WWII. However, his emphasis on a shared Chinese identity is increasingly out of tune with mainstream sentiment in Taiwan, where less than 3% of the population identify primarily as Chinese and under 10% support an immediate or eventual unification. Polls show growing numbers of people, particularly younger voters, view themselves as distinctly Taiwanese and have no desire to be part of China.
Reaction in Taiwan
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou (Ma)'s China visits and meeting with President Xi Jinping (Xi) are being closely monitored in Taiwan. The ruling party DPP is expected to downplay the significance of Ma's visits, describing them as a private act of tourism by a retiree. Taiwan's opposition KMT, which wishes to celebrate Ma's achievements with Beijing, is torn between celebrating Ma's achievements and avoiding flaunting it in the face of the Taiwanese electorate's concerns about closer cross-strait ties. Ma remains a senior member of the KMT, which won the most seats in Taiwan's parliamentary elections but failed to capture the presidency for the third time.
The KMT is eager to show they can manage relations with both China and the United States, but Ma's meeting may do more harm than help. Few experts believe the meeting will result in any substantial change to cross-strait relations, but for Ma, the meeting will cement his legacy on cross-strait policy.