Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Cheng Li-wun/Facebook
KMT CHAIR CHENG LI-WUN met with Chinese President Xi Jinping today in Beijing. The meeting took place as part of a six-day trip by Cheng to China that started on April 7th.
The meeting began at 11 AM, with a handshake between the two leaders. Subsequently, after introductory remarks by Xi, Cheng began her comments. Taiwanese media outlets were asked to leave partway through Cheng’s comments. After the rest of the closed-door meeting, Cheng later emerged to hold a press conference with the media at 2:30 PM that lasted for approximately half an hour.
Given that China did not allow Xi’s comments to be recorded, it is unclear what the Chinese leader said. The KMT later released Cheng’s comments, and Cheng discussed some of what Xi stated during the press conference. This is not the first time that the media are pushed out partway through meetings between KMT chairs and Chinese presidents.
Before Cheng’s meeting with Xi, Cheng had already made a major policy address in Nanjing, at Sun Yat-Sen’s Mausoleum. Notably, Cheng advocated commitment to the 1992 Consensus, but this was framed as “One Country, Oppose Taiwanese independence” rather than “One China, respective interpretations.” In the speech, Cheng also lashed out at “despotic” Western civilization, while framing Asian civilization as inherently peaceful, echoing Sun Yat-sen’s “Kingly Way”. Japanese imperialism in the 20th century was depicted as due to Japan absorbing Western influences. Thus, Cheng had already outlined her view that Taiwan should align with China in previous comments.
Cheng’s shift in her framing of the 1992 Consensus was rapidly noted by analysts in Taiwan. During the comments by Xi Jinping that did, in fact, occur in full view of the media, Xi echoed this framing.
Most notably, in her speech today during her meeting with Xi, Cheng invited the Chinese leader to visit Taiwan. In the Q-and-A section, Cheng later stated that this would be contingent on the KMT becoming the ruling party in Taiwan again. It seems, then, that inviting Xi was an election ploy–or perhaps a move aimed at securing Chinese support for an eventual presidential run by her.
Cheng called for continued economic, cultural, trade, and youth exchanges between the two sides, but notably framed this as Taiwan contributing to the national rejuvenation of the Chinese people–a line often used by Xi Jinping. The 1992 Consensus was touted as the bedrock of exchanges between the two sides. Cheng stated that other countries could learn from Taiwan and China’s model of peace in the future and asserted that the KMT would commit to preserving and promoting Chinese culture. Taiwan and China were framed as “One family on both sides of the strait” as well as a shared “community of common destiny,” referencing language used in the past for cross-strait dialogues.
Cheng’s comments are notably heavy in praise for Chinese economic development, echoing the language preferred by the CCP, such as that China has achieved a “moderately prosperous” society, on the basis of poverty reduction and the CCP’s five-year plans.
In terms of specific avenues of cooperation, this would include sustainable development, AI, disaster prevention, carbon reduction, medical care, and other fields. There would be special emphasis placed on exchanges between youth. In the Q-and-A, Cheng brought up that Xi had indicated energy as a realm of potential cooperation–perhaps in line with China’s unusual offer of energy security to Taiwan in return for sovereignty last month.
To this end, Cheng called for the establishment of an institutionalized mechanism for cross-strait exchanges, on the basis of the 1992 Consensus and One China Principle, which could potentially include two-party exchanges, think tank and academic exchanges, and grassroots exchanges. Cheng called for support for Taiwan’s regional economic integration into the RCEP and CPTPP trade pacts, as well as Taiwan’s admission to the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Presumably, Cheng would be suggesting that China could signal goodwill by allowing Taiwan to participate in the WHO and ICAO, and in that way bolster the KMT’s claims to be able to negotiate cross-strait peace.
In the press conference held by Cheng after the meeting, Cheng stated that Xi Jinping’s thinking in his leadership of China was in line with Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People. When questioned about whether young people today born well after 1992 may not identify with China, Cheng stated that more efforts on cross-strait exchanges were needed.
If, in her speech, Cheng had avoided direct attacks on the DPP, in the Q-and-A, Cheng claimed that there were political forces who had sought to undermine her because they did not wish to see her mission of peace succeed. Cheng denied having shifted the contents of the 1992 Consensus from “One Country, Respective Interpretations” to “One Country, Oppose Taiwanese Independence”, suggesting that “enemies of peace” were distorting her words. Cheng went on to state that “Taiwan will lose nothing” in adhering to “One China, oppose Taiwanese Independence.”
Even so, Cheng claimed that Xi indicated respect for Taiwan’s system and that this was a generous stance on his part, but that China hoped for the same respect in turn, and that both sides contributed to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Cheng closed on the note of reiterating a desire for Xi to visit Taiwan with the KMT as the ruling party, as well as that Taiwan and China should explore Taiwan’s participation in the WHO and ICAO, as well as RCEP and CPTPP.
Cheng’s shift on the 1992 Consensus has been interpreted as suggesting that the CCP and KMT should cooperate to combat the DPP. Cheng would not be the first KMT chair to try and shift the meaning of the 1992 Consensus, with Hung Hsiu-chu–another hardliner–having advocated what she touted as an “advanced version” of the 1992 Consensus, which would be “One China, Same Interpretation” instead of “One China, Respective Interpretations.” To this extent, the Chinese government has increasingly dropped the “Respective Interpretations” aspect of the 1992 Consensus, to only refer to “One China”–what is also known as the “One China Principle.”
One notes that when Ma Ying-jeou met with Xi Jinping in 2015, there was speculation that Ma would seek to use the meeting as grounds for a “2015 Consensus” that superseded the 1992 Consensus. The Ma-Xi meeting far surpassed the importance of the meetings between the government-run non-governmental entities of the Straits Exchange Foundation and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits that led to the 1992 Consensus, given that the two are heads of state. This did not come to pass.
As such, it is possible that, with Xi echoing her language on the 1992 Consensus being “One China, Oppose Taiwan Independence,” Cheng has accomplished what previous KMT leaders failed to do. Namely, if such language continues to be used, Cheng may have successfully redefined the 1992 Consensus.
The Lai administration has linked Cheng’s trip to attempts by the KMT to block defense spending in the legislature. Notably, in the course of the trip, the KMT failed to show up for a committee meeting on defense spending that had been blocked by the KMT for months. Instead, a proposal was submitted that would subject future arms purchases to approval by the legislature. The KMT’s ally, the TPP, is expected to seek postponement discussion of arms purchases to July 31st.
Cheng’s trip to China is likely aimed at shoring up her position in the party, and calling on China to back her in future endeavors. Through taking control of the KMT’s China policy, she hopes to gain power, in such a way that Lien Chan and Ma Ying-jeou were previously able to maintain leadership of the party through becoming the dominant voice on maintaining relations with China. Cheng, then, may seek to challenge other, more moderate possible KMT presidential candidates, such as Taichung mayor Lu Shiow-yen or Chiang Wan-an.
Will China follow suit, through alignment with Cheng and the KMT? That is to be seen. But in suggesting a “United Front” between the KMT and CCP against the DPP–on other occasions, depicted by Cheng as aligned with Japan and historically revisionist on Japanese atrocities–one notes a historical framing that harkens to the Sino-Japanese War.
Cheng’s views are not likely to find wide circulation with the public and, in fact, give the DPP ammunition for future attacks on the KMT. Her actions, too, may widen the split between moderates and hardliners in the KMT in such a way that is counter-productive for the party in subsequent elections. If some in Taiwan have found Cheng’s meteoric rise from obscurity to superstardom to be suspicious and suspected potential Chinese interference, Cheng’s words today may add to that perception.
Suggesting alliance with the CCP to combat the DPP, too, may be read by Taiwanese as having uncomfortable echoes of the authoritarian period, where Taiwanese were routinely arrested and executed by the KMT on charges of pro-independence views. The proposal of an alliance also unwittingly highlights the drift of the contemporary KMT from its roots since, after all, the KMT also imprisoned and executed thousands on the basis of Communist views.
Indeed, preceding days have seen netizens investigating Cheng’s past, to understand what led a former DPP politician who once advocated Taiwanese independence to shift toward stark pro-unification views. Netizens had seized upon a moment in which Chinese officials referenced seeing past videos of Cheng and her reacting in surprise, perhaps because she is on the public record in the past as having supported Taiwanese independence. In the course of this, reports that her husband served as a spy on student activists during the authoritarian period surfaced, with the suggestion that her shift in views was due to his influence.
In spite of Cheng’s claims that meeting with Xi would decrease tensions, the People’s Liberation Army declared live-fire exercises in the Yellow Sea yesterday, even as China has attempted to deny that this has anything to do with Taiwan due to geographic distance. China has also reserved five zones of airspace off its coast, stretching 340 miles from the Yellow Sea to Shanghai, an unusual move that suggests prolonged military activity. The daily number of air incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone has, too, increased during the time of Cheng’s visit to China, with the largest number of planes and vessels in the last week actually being on the day of Cheng’s meeting with Xi.