Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been framed as a step toward peace. Dialogue is always preferable to confrontation, the public is told. Few would disagree.
However, dialogue is not the issue. Representation is. Peace is not the question — surrender is.
When this meeting takes place, the question is: “Whose voice is going to be heard in that room?”
Cheng has couched her visit in the familiar formula of “opposing Taiwan independence and upholding the 1992 consensus.” In her Monday news conference, she repeatedly spoke of “peace,” expressing hope that the meeting would usher in a “warm spring” across the Taiwan Strait and even allow Taiwan to “contribute to peace for humanity.”
The language is soothing. It is also dangerously incomplete.
In this context, peace is not a symmetric negotiation between equals. China holds the military, economic and political hammer. It is Beijing that routinely sends warplanes across the Taiwan Strait median line, conducts large-scale exercises around Taiwan and dictates the terms under which any dialogue might occur.
To ask for peace from the party that wields the hammer is to imply one of two things: Either that one is prepared to resist at all costs, or that one is prepared to yield. There is no stable middle ground unless the side holding the hammer decides not to use it — and nothing in Beijing’s military modernization, doctrine or repeated insistence on “reunification” suggests it has changed its mind about taking Taiwan.
Cheng’s framework does not acknowledge this asymmetry. Instead, it assumes that peace can be advanced simply by reaffirming “oppose Taiwan independence, uphold the 1992 consensus.” For her party, this position is consistent with its platform and past practice under former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). For Taiwan as a whole, it substantially misrepresents the democratic reality.
Taiwan is not defined by any single political premise. Its identity and future are shaped by a vibrant democratic process. To present one party’s formula as the basis for cross-strait dialogue is not to represent Taiwan — it is to narrow it.
Beijing does not treat such engagements as mere partisan differences. It elevates them and presents them internationally as reflective of broader Taiwanese sentiment. The line between dialogue and endorsement becomes conveniently blurred.
If the goal is genuinely to reduce tensions, then clarity, not ambiguity, is required. Any meaningful conversation should rest on a simple, principled foundation: Taiwan’s future must be decided by Taiwanese. This is the core of Taiwan’s democratic legitimacy and the minimum condition for dialogue.
If this principle cannot be openly spoken in Beijing, then one must ask what exactly is being advanced in its absence. If it cannot be said, then the meeting is not about peace, it is about surrender.
Supporters of the visit say that engagement keeps channels open and lowers tensions. That might be true in a narrow sense. Yet engagement without clear boundaries allows one side to define the terms while the other participates within them.
Taiwan’s strength has never come from avoiding difficult conversations. It has come from facing them with clarity.
When Cheng meets Xi, she carries more than a KMT party platform. She carries the weight of Taiwan’s democratic legitimacy. That responsibility cannot be delegated, diluted or selectively applied.
Dialogue is valuable — but only when it reflects reality.
Reality leads to a question that cannot be avoided: If Xi were to say: “Peace, of course — but under unification,” what would Cheng reply?
John Cheng is a retired businessman from Hong Kong now living in Taiwan.
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