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Voxpress:

First time a former Taiwanese president visits Beijing (and shakes hands with Xi Jinping)

2024-04-10 19:07:17Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
First time a former Taiwanese president visits Beijing (and shakes hands with Xi
Handshake at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing between Xi and Ma, broadcast on Taiwanese TV

It had never happened since Chiang Kai-shek took refuge on the island in 1949 with the remnants of his army and government defeated by Mao's People's Liberation Army.

The former president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou was received this Wednesday by Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in front of the Forbidden City.

Of course, peace is not breaking out between Beijing and Taipei, but the event is still historic and politically interesting.

It comes after years of rising tensions in the Straits and just days before the inauguration in Taipei of a new president, William Lai of the Democratic Progressive Party, with whom Beijing does not want to discuss, accusing him of being a separatist.

But Ying-jeou is from the Kuomintang, the old nationalist party of Chiang Kai-shek, which had relations with the People's Republic of China.

The handshake with Xi was watched live on Taiwanese TV. The Chinese leader repeated one of his favorite phrases: "Taiwanese are compatriots, they are Chinese." He added that "no external intervention" will be able to stop the reunification.

"The differences between our (political) systems cannot change the objective fact that we belong to the same country and the same nation."

Therefore, no concessions, no openings regarding the Chinese Communist Party's ultimate goal of regaining control of Taiwan.

Xi said that "there is no grievance that cannot be resolved within a family." The problem is that Taiwanese people today feel neither compatriots nor family with the Chinese.

According to opinion polls, 62% of islanders identify as Taiwanese only; 30% Taiwanese and Chinese, 2% Chinese. And 88% want to maintain the status quo: "de facto" independence.

The former Kuomintang president responded to the Chinese leader that tensions in the Straits make many Taiwanese unhappy: "A war would be unbearable for the Chinese people," he said, using "Chinese people" to refer to the ethnic group rather than citizenship.

He concluded that "people on both sides of the strait have enough wisdom to handle disputes peacefully and avoid falling into conflict."

According to Taipei political scientists, the honor of a meeting in Beijing, extended by Xi to Ma, is intended to send a double message.

First: no dialogue with independents like Tsai and the new president Lai, but no closure to the Kuomintang. Second, it would target Joe Biden: China currently has no intention of starting a new war in the Straits.

Ma Ying-jeou was president of Taiwan from 2008 to 2016 and in November 2015 in Singapore he was the protagonist of a first meeting with Xi Jinping.

At the time, Ma was at the end of his term, and his handshake in front of the cameras on neutral ground in Singapore, timed at eighty-one seconds, was poised to leave a legacy of dialogue.

Things went differently because Xi severed political contacts with Taipei in 2016 when Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected president, accused of unilateral independence from China.

And now, the Taiwanese people have voted as their new president another member of the Democratic Party, William Lai, who will take office on May 20.

In reality, Tsai and Lai never thought of declaring independence, they know it would mean war, but they defend the status quo, namely Taiwanese democracy and its refusal to submit to the Chinese Communist Party.

For years, the only close encounters between the two sides of the strait have been between Chinese aircraft and warships and Taiwanese air force and navy units deployed in defense.


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