Sun, Apr 12, 2026 page8

• EDITORIAL: Cheng ratified Xi’s view of Taiwan

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  In the opening remarks of her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) framed her visit as a historic occasion.

  In his own remarks, Xi had also emphasized the history of the relationship between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Where they differed was that Cheng’s account, while flawed by its omissions, at least partially corresponded to reality.

  The meeting was certainly historic, albeit not in the way that Cheng and Xi were signaling, and not from the perspective of Taiwanese. It could well be a watershed in terms of the Taiwanese electorate’s relationship with the KMT, at least with Cheng at the helm. However, the meeting between the two party leaders was very much about the past.

  Xi began his remarks by saying: “This is the first meeting between the leaders of our respective parties after a gap of a decade.”

  Cheng began hers in a similar vein, saying: “Today, the leaders of our two parties are able to have this exchange in this hall after a gap of 10 years. At this moment, I feel the eyes of the world are on us, and the great responsibility handed to us in history. The trajectory of cross-strait relations is an issue that we jointly face.”

  She also conceded that “the KMT and the CCP have undeniably had our ups and downs for more than a century of engaging with each other.”

  It is true that Xi and Cheng are leaders of their parties, and it was interesting that Xi had allowed the meeting to be framed as two party chairs meeting, suggesting a degree at least of parity of position, rather than an illegitimate leader of an extinct party deigning to represent a province of China while paying tribute to China’s supreme leader. That was a concession that few would have expected, and was indicative of the positive reception Xi was willing to portray, accentuated by his amiable demeanor in the meeting.

  The meeting came after Xi and the CCP refused to meet with representatives of Taiwan’s elected government for a whole decade, ostensibly because of then-president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) refusal to accept the “1992 consensus” as a prerequisite for cross-strait talks. That Friday’s meeting was between the heads of the CCP and the KMT transported the event back to well before 1992, to a period suspended in history in which the Chinese Civil War between the two parties is still going on. In this, the meeting was less historic than historical.

  This framing is important, because it not only coheres with the out-dated narrative that the ideologies of both parties exist within, necessary to propagate the CCP’s version of events that cross-strait relations must be seen in the context of an unresolved civil war; it is the only narrative that frames the relationship between the two nations as one of an internal matter between two belligerents.

  For ideological reasons, and to avoid sabotaging the meeting at the outset, Cheng went along with it. Even if she intends to stand up for Taiwan as a sovereign nation, she has become complicit in propagating this narrative. She will face the judgement of the Taiwanese electorate for this.

  Xi’s account of Taiwan and its population was truly a-historic. His was an account of a Taiwan that has always been part of China, of one where the populace has always been Chinese, one in which the Chinese populace has fought back against foreign regimes. This is only true if you count the original Austronesian inhabitants before Han immigrants arrived several centuries ago, or forgot that one of the foreign regimes the Taiwanese were victimized by was the post-war KMT. His account was the one that the CCP has unilaterally devised over the past few decades, and which he himself has refined.

  Xi is unwilling to engage with the elected government of Taiwan because the government is an inconvenient irrelevance in his a-historical account. This is why he would only meet with the current leader of the CCP’s historical adversary, the KMT.

  We all want peace, but Cheng’s path will lock Taiwan into a history and a future that Xi can revise at will.
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