Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) yesterday said that he is in no rush to travel to China to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), and that Beijing’s proposals to get Taiwan to accept communist rule have “no market” among Taiwanese.
Since the KMT was trounced in the presidential and legislative elections in January last year, the party has been unable to shake accusations by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that it is Beijing’s lackey.
Chiang, elected as party leader following the defeat, told reporters that he is in no hurry to follow his predecessors footsteps and meet Xi.
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
“We can wait for a better time. There’s no urgency for it. It’s not just a meeting for a meeting’s sake, but it needs to be meaningful, respectful,” he said at the party’s headquarters in Taipei, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic has also made it difficult to travel outside of Taiwan.
“The timing needs to be right, but more importantly, there needs to be the precondition of equality and dignity, and it needs to be beneficial for Taiwan,” Chiang said.
The KMT maintains routine contact with the Chinese Communist Party (CPP), but there has been no high-level communication, Chiang said.
In Singapore in 2015, Xi met then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in a landmark meeting, shortly before President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected the following year. That meeting was cast as a meeting between the heads of the CCP and the KMT, rather than one between heads of state.
However, political trust has “collapsed” since then, with small issues turning into angry quarrels between Taipei and Beijing, Chiang said.
He faces an uphill struggle to win back voter support at a time when Chinese pressure on Taiwan is unrelenting and many electors view the KMT as not properly Taiwanese.
In July, he faces re-election as party chairman, although he reiterated that he has no interest in running for president and would rather serve as a “kingmaker” by choosing the party’s presidential candidate for the election in 2024.
Being firm with autocratic China would be an important test of whether the KMT can return to power — Chiang described China as the major threat that Taiwan faces.
Chiang said that China’s offer of using “one country, two systems” to entice Taiwan with a high degree of autonomy, like how Beijing is supposed to run Hong Kong, has “no market” in Taiwan, where the people like their freedoms.
“We are already used to this kind of lifestyle. If you want Taiwan’s people to change it — impossible,” he said.
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