THE nation’s main opposition leader will make a rare trip to China tomorrow, weeks before US President Donald Trump.
Cheng Li-wun (pic), who will become the first sitting chairperson of the Kuomintang (KMT) to travel to China in a decade, said she wants to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping to build cross-strait “peace”.
Cheng’s visit comes as the United States intensifies pressure on Taiwanese opposition lawmakers to approve a proposal for defence purchases.
Taiwan’s top China policy body said Beijing had “summoned” Cheng for the purpose of cutting off “Taiwan’s military purchases from the United States”.
“Beijing’s intention, in short, is to internalise the cross-strait issue, treating it as a domestic matter for China, with foreign intervention prohibited,” Mainland Affairs Council spokesman Liang Wen-chieh said on Thursday.
Cheng hit back, saying: “This trip is entirely for cross-strait peace and stability, so it has nothing to do with arms procurement or other issues.”
The trip enables the KMT to tell voters that they “are the ones who can actually lead Taiwan towards the direction of peace and stability”, said Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Taiwan University.
A friendly meeting with Cheng could help Xi “undermine the argument for US-Taiwan defence cooperation” ahead of the summit with Trump in May, said Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
While the United States has long been ambiguous about its willingness to defend Taiwan, Washington remains Taipei’s biggest arms supplier. — AFP
