Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to hold rare talks on Wednesday with a former president of Taiwan who supports closer ties with China, a highly unusual meeting just weeks before the democratic island swears in a new leader Beijing openly loathes.
Ma Ying-jeou, who led Taiwan from 2008 to 2016 and is currently in Beijing on a 11-day tour across China, will meet Xi on Wednesday afternoon, his party Kuomintang (KMT) confirmed.
The carefully choregraphed moment is steeped in political symbolism: it's the first time a former president of Taiwan has been hosted by China's top leader in Beijing since Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists fled to Taipei in 1949.
At a news conference in Taipei, KMT Chairman Eric Chu said he hoped the meeting between Ma and Xi "can adhere to the basic tone set during their talks in Singapore nearly nine years ago, and can continue to lay a better foundation for future cross-strait exchanges."
Chu was referencing the first meeting between Xi and former KMT leader Ma, since their historic summit in Singapore in 2015 when the latter was still in office.
But their reunion also highlights the widening political divide across the Taiwan Strait – and how Xi's ever more aggressive posture toward Taipei has driven more Taiwanese away from China.
That shift was underscored in January, when Taiwanese voters shrugged off warnings by China and handed the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) a historic third term by electing Lai Ching-te, who has long faced Beijing's wrath for championing Taiwan's sovereignty.
Since then, Beijing has poached another of Taipei's dwindling number of diplomatic allies and ramped up patrols around Taiwan's frontline islands after two Chinese fishermen drowned in nearby waters, while continuing to fly its fighter jets near the self-ruled island.
Ma's meeting with Xi also coincides with a frenetic week of diplomatic activity in Washington where President Joe Biden will host the first-ever leaders' summit between the US, Japan and the Philippines. Joint concerns over China's increasing assertiveness under Xi, including toward Taiwan, are a key driver of that summit.
A senior source in the Taiwan government told CNN Beijing postponed the meeting from Monday to coincide with the summit between Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday.
China's pressure tactics are intended to nudge Taiwan's incoming Lai administration toward a more accommodating political stance toward China, said Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst for the International Crisis Group.
"Ma's visit continues this effort by underscoring Beijing's position that cross-strait dialogue is only possible with those in Taiwan who accept the idea that the two sides of the strait belong to 'one China,'" she said.
Beijing has cut off high-level official contacts with Taipei since President Tsai Ing-wen from the DPP took office in 2016, riding a wave of anger over Ma's controversial trade deal with Beijing and capitalizing on the growing number of Taiwanese voters determined to maintain the island's distinct identity.
Unlike the KMT, the DPP rejects Beijing's precondition for official talks – an agreement under which both sides accept there is "one China," with their own interpretations on what that means.
Official communication is unlikely to resume for Lai, who has vowed to follow Tsai's cross-strait policies. Beijing has repeatedly rebuked Lai's offer for talks and denounced him as a dangerous separatist and "troublemaker."
But by fixating on Ma, who has been out of office for years and wields little power to shape Taiwan's political reality, Beijing may be revealing "its inability to find or cultivate another Taiwanese political figure of comparable stature who is willing to play dove toward Beijing today," said Wen-Ti Sung, a Taiwan-based fellow with the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub.
Keeping reading about the closely watched meeting.
More on relations across the Taiwan Strait:
- Tensions high in the waters off Taiwan islands visible from China's shore. But for locals, life goes on
- The dangerous parallels between Putin's ambitions in Ukraine and Xi's claims on Taiwan
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