The delegation led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun (江丙坤) chose April Fools Day to bring their 10-point consensus with China back to Taiwan. But Taiwanese don't find the joke particularly funny. Looked at from the perspective of the national good, the visits by high-level KMT members -- the timing, the role they chose to play and the results -- are all inappropriate.
With regard to the timing, the KMT chose to make the visit immediately following the passage of the "Anti-Secession" Law. At a time when local and international opinion was directed against this absurd and barbaric move by China, the KMT's actions served to help China maintain the facade that its intentions are peaceful and that the law is beneficial to cross-strait relations.
Whether intentionally or not, the KMT has helped China out of the disadvantageous position it got itself into by passing the Anti-Secession Law.
The KMT, in making a visit to China and signing an agreement with a foreign power, has shown a serious confusion about who they are. Whether from the perspective of international law or diplomatic protocol, opposition parties rarely, if ever, negotiate an agreement with the government of a foreign country.
An opposition party may assist the government in promoting foreign policy, but that they should be the signatories is very bizarre.
If any political party were entitled to sign an agreement with foreign powers and then return home to demand it be implemented, then what purpose would the government serve?
As for the results, the 10-point consensus brought back by the KMT is a sugar-coated poison pill that places Taiwan in a disadvantageous negotiating position. The 10 points all seem to be of a practical nature and avoid sensitive political issues.
If they were implemented, they may well be beneficial in reducing tensions across the Taiwan Strait. But the problem is what it avoids, for it fails to address the one issue that China most stubbornly insists upon.
In future, when the government of Taiwan seeks negotiations on the above issues, China will once again put forward the "one China" principle and the 1992 consensus as prerequisites for adopting any proposals.
To put it another way, China presents a rosy future to the KMT, but remains unchanged in its dealings with the government.
It's like a salesperson promoting a product to a child by telling them of the special benefits and preferential price they will receive, but when the time comes for the parents to actually pay for the product, the salesperson presents a different persona, pointing out the stringent terms and conditions that must be abided by, and the harsh terms of payment.
Appealing to the opposition by offering benefits so that they will put pressure on the government, and then demanding compliance with stringent conditions when negotiating with the government, is a strategy that China has often used.
From the negotiations that took place between the KMT and the Chinese government we can clearly see that China is trying to sow dissention and exacerbate existing conflicts within Taiwan in an effort to undermine morale and unity.
It seems a great pity that the party that claims to have made the most comprehensive study and to have the best understanding of China cannot even see through this crudest of unificationist ploys.
I don't know if this has anything to do with April Fools day. Is the KMT simply fooling itself, or is it playing the people of Taiwan for fools?
Luo Chih-cheng is executive director of the Institute for National Policy Research.
Translated by Ian Bartholomew
When I visited Taiwan last summer, I called on the nation to use its status as a technology superpower to build superweapons. It is obvious to me as I return a year later that Taiwan is now answering that call. By 2030, Taiwan envisions a domestic drone hub, capable of producing large quantities of drones per year. The nation continues to tighten cooperation across the private sector, scientific researchers and the elected government, on creating new and innovative production avenues for defense, while efforts to become central to the “democratic supply chain” are only increasing. Anduril is seeing all of these positive
Singaporean former Prime Minister and current senior minister Lee Hsien- Loong(李顯龍) last month stood on Chinese soil and told Beijing that Singapore cooperates because of “shared interests”, not because of common “ethnic descent,” a significant statement that has upended China’s cognitive warfare tactics of “ethnic nationalism.” Along with using its military buildup and economic growth to expand its international dominance, China has long deployed ethnic politics to promote the idea that all ethnic Chinese around the world, regardless of citizenship, share a tight bond with the Chinese motherland, by which it means the regime of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in San Francisco on Tuesday last week said if she had not met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), she would have been “just a plain” and “even negligible” KMT chairperson, bluntly signaling the role she is playing in her visit to the US — Beijing’s messenger from Taiwan. Cheng and her delegation arrived in the US on Monday last week for a two-week visit across five major cities. Her party said the group is scheduled to meet with US lawmakers, officials, policy experts and businesspeople. Before departing, Cheng said her trip
In 1935, the German Reich led by the National Socialist Party officially created the Nuremberg Race Laws, a “legal cage”, for German Jews, stripping them of citizenship, criminalizing their personal relationships, barring them from public life, and transforming them into stateless subjects and isolating them from the rest of society. Similarly, in March 2026, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) National People’s Congress adopted the “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress” law, which represents the most significant shift in Chinese domestic governance since the era of Mao Zedong (毛澤東). Ostensibly designed as domestic legislation to manage China’s 56 officially recognized ethnic groups,
RSS