The visit of a Taiwanese KMT official to mainland China next week—the first such visit in a decade—has the potential to calm relations across the Taiwan Strait and set the conditions for peace and cooperation.
Recently elected KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun says she has accepted an invitation to travel to mainland China this coming week, including meeting with Xi Jinping. At that meeting, they will meet in their capacity as the heads of their respective parties. This visit could plan a useful role in reestablishing cross-strait communication and trust.
Cheng’s April 7-12 visit will bring her to Jiangsu, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing. Her time in Nanjing is to include a visit to the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen, who was the founder of the KMT party and served as the first president of the Republic of China.
Cheng has stated that she seeks political unity and has requested to meet with President Lai (of the DPP party) either before or after her trip to the mainland. (A DPP leader has called such a meeting “unnecessary.") The DPP’s anti-China stance has resulted in a breakdown of official communications between the two sides. She took the occasion of Tomb Sweeping Day to visit the mausoleum of former KMT leader and president Chiang Kai-shek, where she said that millions of people lost their lives in the Chinese Civil War, which ended only when the KMT withdrew to Taiwan. She said that she hopes history does not repeat itself, and there is no more conflict or killing between the people of Taiwan and China. “I believe that [Chiang] would be glad to see our current efforts toward cross-strait peace,” she said.
