A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation.
Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng meeting since the start of this year, the timing of the TAO’s announcement seemed to be meticulously calculated.
Earlier that day, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to show support for the Cabinet’s eight-year NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.1 billion) special defense budget. The budget was proposed in November last year, but its passage has been persistently hindered by opposition lawmakers, which was reportedly one of the CPP’s preconditions for a Xi-Cheng meeting, although the KMT denied it.
The US senators’ visit is seen as strong, bipartisan support for the long-standing Taiwan-US partnership, and bolstering the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities and military resilience to deter Chinese aggression.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) earlier that day also published an exclusive interview with Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), who was widely viewed as the KMT’s 2028 presidential hopeful before she turned down her party’s chairperson nomination last year.
In the interview, Lu cited a poll that showed that 61 percent of the public support increasing defense procurement, especially from the US.
It is reasonable for the special defense budget to be between NT$800 billion to NT$1 trillion, she said, adding that the legislature should pass it as quickly as possible to secure arms for Taiwan.
Regarding the perception that the KMT is against the special defense budget, especially given the party’s substantially smaller “NT$380 billion +N” version of the budget, Lu said that “an individual cannot represent all.”
Lu’s views are widely believed to be part of a power struggle within the KMT, with Lu and the KMT’s local government heads trying to represent a more pragmatic direction in foreign affairs and cross-strait relations to win this year’s local elections and possibly a 2028 presidential nomination for Lu. Her views run counter to the increasingly China-leaning and US-skeptic stance of Cheng and KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (?), which is raising concerns among its supporters.
The Xinhua announcement was made at about 10am, after the US senators arrived and Lu’s interview was published, and the KMT held an impromptu news conference an hour later to confirm Cheng’s trip, which seems to imply that the party was also caught off guard and forced to reply.
The timing of the announcement does not seem like a coincidence and is more like a clear signal from the CCP. It is showing the KMT that those who align themselves with Beijing and support its Taiwan narrative would be “rewarded.” At the same time, it is showing Taiwanese that siding with the US and bolstering defense to deter a regional threat is not the only option, and might even be futile and dangerous — they could instead accept China’s “goodwill” and “peaceful” plans (unification).
Moreover, to the Democratic Progressive Party, the US and Taiwan’s international partners, Beijing is creating an image that cross-strait relations are not an international issue nor are they up for discussion; rather, it is an “internal” issue that could be controlled by Beijing — as it already demonstrated in its overbearing influence over the KMT and agenda-setting in the opposition-dominated legislature. It could also use Cheng’s visit to undermine international trust in the nation’s self-defense determination and leverage it during Xi’s upcoming meeting with US President Donald Trump, possibly convincing him to reduce US support in exchange for trade benefits.
Cheng either miscalculated Beijing’s “immense goodwill and sincerity” or is naively overconfident that she could create a new “cross-strait peace framework” simply by talking to Xi; or she is eager to be part of the CCP’s “united front” efforts in exchange for China backing her party leadership and helping the KMT win the local and presidential elections, with no regard for Taiwan’s national interest.
Either way, Cheng saying that “the entire world follows the ‘one China’ policy and does not support Taiwanese independence,” the visit being entirely arranged by the CCP and the KMT’s continuous stalling of the special defense and government budgets are practically handing all the cards to Beijing, while risking Taiwan’s international space and jeopardizing national security and development.
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