As wars rage and American alliances look less certain, China’s leader Xi Jinping is making a renewed case to Taiwan: Its future lies not with Washington, but with Beijing.
Mr. Xi delivered that message implicitly in a rare meeting in Beijing on Friday with Cheng Li-wun, the chairwoman of the Nationalist Party, Taiwan’s main opposition party.
The meeting underscored how Mr. Xi is trying to shape Taiwan’s politics by courting parties more open to Beijing’s stance and by promoting a vision of a shared Chinese identity that includes the island. Beijing shuns Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party, which rejects Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is its territory. But China maintains ties with the Nationalist Party, which favors closer ties with Beijing.
“The world today is far from tranquil, and peace is all the more precious,” Mr. Xi told Ms. Cheng at the opening of their talks, according to a Taiwanese television broadcast of the meeting. “Compatriots on both sides of the strait are Chinese, one family, and the desire for peace, development, exchanges and cooperation is a shared aspiration.”
In her remarks, Ms. Cheng also appealed to a shared Chinese heritage, and to the idea that Taiwan could benefit from Mr. Xi’s policies, which he calls the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
“General Secretary Xi very clearly conveyed a very positive message, and then he showed a great deal of care and attention for the expectations and needs of Taiwan,” Ms. Cheng told reporters at a news conference in Beijing afterward, using Mr. Xi’s title as leader of the Chinese Communist Party. In her public remarks, she did not mention the regular harassment of Taiwan by China’s armed forces.
Ms. Cheng is the first sitting Nationalist leader in a decade to hold talks with Mr. Xi. His outreach appears aimed at increasing pressure on Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party, who wants Taiwan to forge a future separate from China. The meeting elevates a rival of Mr. Lai’s and potentially undercuts his argument that Taiwan must rely on Washington to deter threats from Beijing.
Mr. Lai has proposed increasing Taiwan’s military spending through a $40 billion package to be spent across eight years, on top of the regular budget outlays.
“Xi wants to cast doubt in Taiwan over the Lai Ching-te administration’s focus on self-defense by showing the benefits of a more conciliatory stance toward China,” said Amanda Hsiao, a director on China policy in the Eurasia Group, a consultancy firm.
The Taiwanese government’s Mainland Affairs Council, which manages relations with Beijing, denounced Ms. Cheng’s comments to Mr. Xi, saying that they undermined the island-democracy’s separate status. Ms. Cheng’s “proclaimed ‘framework for peace’ is a ‘framework for unification’,” the council said.
The talks with Ms. Cheng could also serve a tactical purpose for Mr. Xi as he prepares for a summit with President Trump in China next month. “This narrative of China as peacemaker could also help Xi make a more convincing argument to Trump for why the U.S. president should, for example, hold off on arms sales to Taiwan,” Ms. Hsiao said.
Mr. Xi’s repeated invocations of a shared heritage and ancestry showed how China’s leaders are increasingly turning to notions of cultural ties to try to influence the Taiwanese people, said Wei-feng Tzeng, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, who studies cross-strait relations.
But Mr. Xi’s message may struggle to gain traction with Taiwanese voters. In surveys, only about a third of Taiwanese people identify partly as Chinese; most describe themselves as exclusively Taiwanese.
China may offer trade and other economic incentives to entice Taiwan to grow closer to Beijing. But that inducement is undercut by Beijing’s sustained military pressure on Taiwan, including exercises that simulate blockades and amphibious assaults.
“If Cheng Li-wun wants Taiwanese people to clearly feel she has accomplished something in her trip, the fastest way would be reducing Chinese military activity against Taiwan,” said Professor Tzeng. “But that is unlikely because she doesn’t have the chips to negotiate this with Xi Jinping. She’s an opposition leader after all.”
Still, Mr. Xi and Ms. Cheng appear to be betting that Taiwan’s voters will be drawn to a message of rapprochement with Beijing, especially in a more turbulent world.
“She is sensing that the anxiety about the U.S. president’s policies toward Taiwan will not just be a momentary phenomenon,” said William Yang, a senior analyst in Taiwan for the International Crisis Group, which monitors and tries to defuse conflict.
In her youth, Ms. Cheng was a fiery proponent of independence for Taiwan. But now she says she is proudly Chinese, as well as Taiwanese. In Beijing, Ms. Cheng said that if her party were to win the presidential elections in 2028, she would like to invite Mr. Xi to visit one of Taiwan’s outlying islands near the Chinese coast.
She said that she hoped Mr. Xi could “come to Taiwan for a walk and a look around.”
Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.
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