Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou Meeting: No Force Can Separate Us

2024-04-10 13:46:00
Xi Jinping to former president of Taiwan: “No force can separate us”

Xi Jinping received this Wednesday in Beijing the former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou (2008-2016), responsible for the greatest rapprochement between China and Taiwan since the end of the civil war in 1949, in a meeting in which the Chinese president said that “External interference” will not stop the reunification of the island and the mainland.

The meeting emulates the historic summit held by both in Singapore in 2015 but in a different context due to the rise in tensions between Taipei and Beijing, which claims sovereignty of the island.

“Differences in systems cannot change the objective fact that we belong to one nation and one people,” Xi told Ma, according to a video of the meeting broadcast by Taiwanese television TVBS. “External interference cannot stop the historical cause of our reunification.”

Xi Jinping with former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou

Xi did not elaborate, but Chinese terminology referring to external interference in Taiwan often points to the support Taipei receives from Western countries such as the United States, especially arms sales, which infuriates Beijing.

Ma, former president of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, now in the opposition, is in China for a tour that has included activities in various cities, including Beijing.

In recent days, the Taiwanese press had anticipated the meeting between Ma and Xi, who received him as general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CCP), the Xinhua agency highlights today, making clear the unofficial nature of the visit.

In March 2023, Ma became the first former Taiwanese president to travel to the People’s Republic of China, a visit in which he called for more exchanges between Chinese and Taiwanese students because “they share the same culture and ethnic identity.”

“Young people represent the future of the Chinese nation, as they are able to establish friendships at an earlier stage in their lives, which will undoubtedly build a solid foundation for sustainable peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.” , he said during his meeting with Xi.

Ma Ying-Jeou (left) and Xi Jinping at their meeting in 2015. (EFE/EPA/FAZRY ISMAIL)

China and Taiwan experienced a great moment of rapprochement during Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency, to the point that he held a historic meeting in Singapore with Xi at the end of 2015, the first in more than 60 years of unilateral separation from the island. .

Ma’s itinerary centers on one theme: that Taiwan is part of a great Chinese nation, united by culture and history, if not by politics. In northwest China, Ma paid his respects at a monument to the Yellow Emperor, the legendary ancestor of the Han people, the dominant ethnic group in China and Taiwan.

But fewer and fewer Taiwanese share his belief that Taiwan should see its future as part of a greater China. Most Taiwanese accept the ambiguous status quo of their island democracy, self-governed but not recognized as an independent country by most governments. But they reject the idea of ​​unification with China. Even within Ma’s Nationalist Party, many politicians, including his recent presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, have become noticeably more wary of China. And more and more Taiwanese describe themselves as exclusively Taiwanese, rather than Chinese.

Shiyu or Lion Islet, which is part of Kinmen County, one of the coastal islands of Taiwan, with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background, in Kinmen. (REUTERS/Ann Wang/file)

The Taiwanese press has highlighted that the visit has no major political objectives other than protecting Ma’s “legacy” as former president, and experts see it as “unlikely” that it will contribute to calming tensions in the Strait.

For its part, the island’s Executive has limited itself to expressing its “respect” for the former president’s trip, urging him to maintain a cautious stance in his meetings with Chinese officials.

For Beijing, Xi’s meeting with Ma is part of a strategy aimed at setting its terms for dealing with Taiwan’s next leader.

Ma’s visit takes place just a month and a half before the island’s president-elect and current vice president, William Lai (Lai Ching-te), considered an “independence supporter” in Beijing’s eyes, takes over as president.

The current context, however, might not be more different from then: since Ma left office in 2016, Xi has frozen high-level contacts with Taiwan, attempted to isolate it on the international stage, and attempted to intimidate it with a increasing military presence around the island.

The president-elect and current vice president of Taiwan, William Lai. (EFE/EPA/DANIEL CENG)

In recent months, China has shown that it might pressure the Lai administration militarily, economically and diplomatically. He described Lai’s offers of dialogue as insincere. On the other hand, Beijing has shown that it will court friendlier Taiwanese politicians, like Ma, who accept the framework of relations demanded by Beijing: that both sides accept that they are part of a single China, even if they differ on what that means.

China’s “immediate goal is to pressure the incoming Lai administration to adopt a more accommodative policy stance in cross-strait relations,” Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst at the Crisis Group, an organization that It tries to defuse wars and crises.

“Ma’s visit helps underscore Beijing’s stance that cross-strait dialogue is conditional on accepting the idea that the two sides of the strait belong to ‘one China,’” Hsiao said. Within China, he added, “it is also an attempt to signal to the domestic public that the leaders have things under control, that they have not lost the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese.”

Taiwan and China have been at odds since the communist revolution of 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist troops fled to the island and turned it into their stronghold. Over time, the nationalists ceased to be Beijing’s archenemies and became its preferred interlocutor in Taiwan, especially during Ma’s term. Both sides strengthened economic ties and moved toward talks on their political status and future, which culminated in Ma’s meeting with Xi in 2015.

But the nationalists have lost the last three presidential elections to the Democratic Progressive Party, which has emerged as a defender of Taiwanese democracy and rejects Beijing’s claims on the island. Since Lai was elected in January, defeating a colleague of Ma’s, China has stepped up its pressure.

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