Taiwan opposition leader makes historic rare China visit

China & Taiwan – (Web Desk) – Taiwan’s main opposition leader is heading to China this Tuesday. It is a rare trip focused on building peace between the two sides. But Taiwan’s government has a warning. It says Beijing will use this visit to push against US weapons sales to the island.

KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wun is making history here. She will be the first KMT leader to set foot in China in ten years. She also wants to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping before flying to the United States, Taiwan’s closest security partner.

The KMT has always believed in warmer ties with China. China, for its part, claims Taiwan belongs to it and has never ruled out taking it by force.

Cheng herself has had a surprising rise to the top of the KMT. Xi even sent her a congratulations message back in October. But not everyone is happy. Critics, including some within her own party, say she is too friendly toward China.

Before leaving for Shanghai with her delegation, Cheng spoke to reporters. She said Taiwan must do everything possible to stop a war from starting. “To preserve peace is to preserve Taiwan,” she said at a press conference in Taipei. She added that both sides need to slowly build goodwill and trust together.

Taiwan’s government pushed back ahead of the trip. Officials warned that Beijing would try to cut off Taiwan’s ability to buy weapons from the US and work with other countries. Cheng rejected that idea completely. She said last week that this trip is purely about peace and stability. Nothing more.

Taiwanese lawmakers have been at loggerheads over the government’s plan to spend NT$1.25 trillion ($39 billion) on defence, which has been stalled for months in the opposition-controlled parliament.

Cheng will be in China for six days, visiting Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing where she hopes to meet Xi.

While KMT party members regularly fly to China for exchanges with officials, its last leader to visit was Hung Hsiu-chu in 2016.
China severed high-level contact with Taiwan that year after Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency and rejected Beijing’s claims on the island.

Cross-strait relations have worsened since then as China ramped up military pressure with near daily deployments of fighter jets and warships near Taiwan and regular large-scale military drills.

Cheng’s trip to China comes a month before US President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing for a summit with Xi.

The United States has been piling pressure on Taiwanese opposition lawmakers to back a proposal for defence purchases, including US weapons, to deter a potential Chinese attack.

Cheng has railed against the government’s proposal, insisting “Taiwan isn’t an ATM” and instead backed a KMT plan to allocate NT$380 billion for US weapons with the option for more acquisitions.

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But she faces deepening divisions inside her party over how to counter China’s military threats, with more moderate senior figures in the party pushing for a much higher budget.

While the United States has long been ambiguous about its willingness to defend Taiwan, Washington remains Taipei’s biggest arms supplier, which angers Beijing.

The United States approved the sale of $11 billion worth of arms to Taiwan in December. More deals are in the pipeline, but there have been doubts about whether they would proceed after Xi warned Trump against sending weapons to Taiwan.

Cheng has insisted she supports Taiwan having a strong defence, but said the island does not have to choose between Beijing and Washington.