Chinese President Xi Jinping held a rare meeting with Cheng Li-wun, the leader of Taiwan's largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), in Beijing on Friday, where he said China welcomes "peaceful development" across the Taiwan Strait, and called people from both countries "one family."
This was the first official meeting between the sitting heads of the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT, which favors closer ties with Beijing, in almost a decade.
"We firmly believe that more and more Taiwan compatriots … will recognize that Taiwan's development prospects hinge on a strong motherland, and that the interests and well-being of Taiwan compatriots are closely linked to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," Xi said, according to China's state-run news agency Xinhua.
The meeting comes ahead of a summit in Beijing with President Donald Trump planned for May, where Xi is likely to bring up his opposition to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan – a self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own territory, and has refused to rule out taking by force.
Xi and Cheng shook hands in front of journalists at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where Chinese leaders have traditionally received high-profile guests.
Xi said that he was willing to work with all political parties in Taiwan to foster peaceful relations.
But Beijing has so far refused to engage with Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party as it considers its leaders to be separatists.
Taiwan is a democracy but, under pressure from Beijing, very few countries recognize it as independent.
The KMT doesn't go as far as advocating for unification, but Cheng agrees with Beijing in opposing Taiwanese independence and said that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China.
Though each side interprets "one China" differently. A survey in April showed the KMT has less than a third of popular support.
Beijing has escalated military drills around Taiwan in recent years.
Cheng has called her trip a peace mission to show that dialogue is possible with Beijing to ease tensions.
She praised China's steps towards eradicating poverty and said although people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait "live under different systems," they should respect each other and transcend political confrontation, and that the region shouldn't become "a chessboard for external interference."
"For many KMT figures, it's important to talk to your friends, but it's even more important to talk to your enemies," George Yin, a senior research fellow at the Center for China Studies at National Taiwan University, told NPR.
Yin said Cheng's strategy is to leverage rising anxiety about working with Trump's Washington to advocate for "more of a hedging, middling strategy for Taiwan." He adds that Cheng may use political capital from the trip to push lawmakers to further delay or reduce the government's proposed special defense spending.
Taiwan's president Lai has requested $40 billion for an eight-year investment in advanced weapon systems, including arms from the United States to deter a potential invasion from China. The KMT, which holds a legislative majority alongside their smaller coalition partner, has delayed the bill and proposed a much smaller amount.
Since Cheng was elected chair of the KMT, she has spent months publicly seeking a meeting with Xi, making the case that Taiwan "doesn't have to choose" between China and the U.S.
From Beijing's perspective, analyst Yin thinks Xi wants to use Cheng to pull the KMT rhetoric further toward Beijing's preferred framing.
"When Cheng says 'Taiwan doesn't have to choose between China and the U.S.,' that's a significant departure from the traditional KMT line," he says. "Although the meeting between Cheng and Xi might not lead to concrete policy changes, it could lead to concrete political changes, cornering the KMT into a position that it wouldn't have been comfortable inhabiting in the past."
Taiwan's ruling party doubts the meeting will genuinely improve cross-strait ties.
In a statement on Facebook, Taiwan's president Lai Ching-te urged the KMT to back his defense spending plans, and said "history tells us that compromising with authoritarian powers only sacrifices sovereignty and democracy. It does not bring freedom, and it brings no peace."
Ashish Valentine reported from Taipei and Jennifer Pak from Shanghai.
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