In a landmark move marking the first visit by an incumbent leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party to mainland China in a decade, Kuomintang (KMT) chairperson Cheng Li-wun landed in mainland China on Monday. Cheng, who assumed the KMT’s top leadership post last year, confirmed she happily accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping for the six-day trip, framing her visit as an effort to build a “bridge for peace” across the Taiwan Strait.
Cross-strait communications have been partially frozen by Beijing since 2016, when Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence leaning Democratic Progressive Party took office as Taiwan’s president. Beijing cut the formal exchanges after Tsai refused to accept the 1992 Consensus, which endorses the one-China principle.
During her visit, Cheng is scheduled to travel across three major Chinese cities: Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing, with a planned meeting with President Xi expected in the final stretch of the trip. While the KMT has historically held warmer cross-strait ties with the Chinese Communist Party compared to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, analysts note that Cheng’s eager approach to this visit marks a clear shift from the more cautious stance adopted by her recent KMT predecessors.
The timing of the visit comes as growing skepticism toward the United States has spread among sectors of Taiwan’s public, a shift largely driven by inconsistent signals from former president Donald Trump on U.S. policy toward Taiwan and ongoing uncertainty stemming from the Middle East conflict, according to William Yang, a Northeast Asia analyst at the International Crisis Group, a non-profit global think tank.
Yang explained that Cheng is positioning this visit as an opportunity to demonstrate her ability as a political leader to sustain constructive cross-strait exchanges and work toward de-escalating long-running tensions between the two sides. For decades, Beijing has maintained its position that self-governed Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory, stating it will eventually reunify the island with the mainland and not ruling out the use of military force to achieve this goal. Meanwhile, a large share of Taiwan’s population identifies as a distinct sovereign nation.
While the United States officially recognizes Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China rather than Taipei, it has remained Taiwan’s largest provider of military arms for decades. In recent years, Trump has publicly stated that Taiwan should fully compensate the U.S. for any security protection it receives against mainland China. Just one week before Cheng’s arrival in mainland China, a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers visited Taipei to push Taiwan’s legislature to pass a proposed $40 billion special defense budget, which is currently stalled in the opposition-controlled legislative body.
The invitation from Xi to Cheng also comes roughly one month before Xi is set to hold a scheduled meeting with Trump during Trump’s visit to Beijing on May 14 and 15. According to Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at Australian National University’s Taiwan Centre, Beijing’s move to hold a cordial dialogue with Taiwan’s main opposition party is a strategic step to weaken arguments in favor of expanding U.S.-Taiwan defense cooperation.
This strategic positioning, Sung added, will allow Beijing to prioritize negotiating trade and economic agreements with the U.S. during Trump’s visit, rather than being forced to center the meeting on cross-strait disputes.
For Cheng and the KMT, the visit carries clear domestic political benefits ahead of Taiwan’s upcoming local elections scheduled for later this year. Though Cheng launched her political career as a pro-independence advocate, she has worked in recent years to build a public reputation as a cross-strait peacemaker. Yang notes that Cheng is attempting to navigate a careful middle path between Washington and Beijing, strengthening her own domestic leadership standing while highlighting that current Taiwan President Lai Ching-te has failed to restart official engagement with mainland China.
However, Cheng’s conciliatory stance toward Beijing has faced significant backlash within Taiwan, according to Chong Ja-Ian, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore. Chong explained that many Taiwanese voters view Cheng as an unprincipled opportunist who prioritizes her own political survival and advancement over core issues, a public perception that is reflected in opinion polls showing low public confidence in her leadership.
“That also means that she is willing to wheel and deal,” Chong added. “Who this benefits, and how much, are the bigger questions that remain unanswered.”