The need for Beijing and Washington to pursue “reconciliation and cooperation” and avoid war is the central message of her US trip, Taiwan’s main opposition leader Cheng Li-wun said in San Francisco.
Cheng, leading a delegation from the Kuomintang (KMT), arrived in San Francisco on Monday evening, beginning a two-week US visit closely watched in Beijing, Taipei and Washington.
In San Francisco’s Chinatown on Tuesday, Cheng said China and the US should forge “a relationship of friendship and cooperation”, and that if Washington, Beijing and Taipei worked together, they would create “fresh achievements for the peace and prosperity of the world”, according to media reports.
Cheng also held a closed-door meeting on Tuesday afternoon with scholars from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, according to the KMT.
Cheng said she hoped the first island chain, which marks the Chinese mainland’s closest seas to the wider Pacific, would “gradually transform from a front line of geopolitical contestation into a chain of peace and prosperity”, according to a KMT statement.
Cheng added that she looked forward to Taipei and Washington continuing to deepen their partnership in areas such as defence and security, supply chain resilience and international participation, according to the statement.
“Taiwan’s confidence in facing the cross-strait situation comes in large part from the United States’ long-standing and firm support for Taiwan,” the readout quoted Cheng as saying.
The KMT statement did not mention whether Cheng raised the sensitive issues of US arms sales to Taiwan and the island’s defence budget.
Beijing views Taiwan as part of China to be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington opposes any attempt to change the status quo by force and is committed to supplying the island with defensive weapons.
US President Donald Trump has yet to approve a US$14 billion arms package for the island, a move that risks angering Beijing. Taipei has insisted it was confident the deal would eventually be approved.
Washington has also repeatedly pressed Taipei to pass a special defence budget, but the KMT and another smaller opposition party, the Taiwan People’s Party, backed a smaller version.
Cheng also said on Tuesday evening, at a banquet attended by Taiwanese-Americans, that cross-strait peace could only be realised if the KMT won back power in the 2028 leadership election. Cross-strait relations have deteriorated since Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party came to power in 2016.
At the dinner, Cheng also said her April meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping had lent weight to her US trip. Cheng said she needed Xi’s “unreserved sincerity and goodwill, an expression of his willingness to make the greatest effort for cross-strait peace and stability”.
“Only then would my coming to the US carry a different meaning,” she said.
Cheng said that had she not met Xi, she would have been merely “an opposition leader from Taiwan with no added value”. In the April meeting with Cheng, Xi urged patience on the issue of reunification and called for more cross-strait exchanges.
It was the first meeting between the heads of the Communist Party and the KMT in a decade. Days later, Beijing announced a package of 10 measures aimed at promoting exchanges with Taiwan that appeared designed to bolster Cheng politically.
Cheng’s US trip also comes just over two weeks after Xi met Trump in Beijing and warned the US president that any mishandling of the Taiwan issue could lead to an “extremely dangerous situation”.
Cheng will arrive in Boston on Wednesday, where she is expected to hold closed-door meetings with international relations scholars at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Attendees are expected to include Graham Allison, the founding dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who popularised the “Thucydides Trap” theory.
The theory that a rising power and an established hegemony are destined for war was quoted by Xi during his meeting with Trump.
Cheng will also visit New York, Washington and Los Angeles. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
