Taipei, Taiwan – As Taiwanese opposition chief Cheng Li-wun meets with Chinese language President Xi Jinping in Beijing later this week, the Taiwanese public can be watching carefully to see how the 2 leaders focus on Taiwan’s disputed political standing, in a make-or-break second for Cheng’s political profession.
The just lately elected chairperson of the Kuomintang (KMT) travelled to Shanghai on Tuesday, accompanied by a delegation of occasion members. Cheng advised a media briefing earlier than her six-day journey that she goals to point out that Taiwan and China “usually are not destined for warfare, nor do they should stay on the point of navy battle”.
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Cheng’s journey will take her to Nanjing, the capital of China’s japanese Jiangsu province, to go to the mausoleum of Chinese language revolutionary chief Solar Yat-sen – revered on each side of the Taiwan Strait because the “father of contemporary China” – earlier than heading to Beijing for her summit with Xi on the finish of the week.
President Ma Ying-jeou, additionally from the KMT, was the final sitting Taiwanese chief to satisfy with Xi at a 2015 summit in Singapore. Nevertheless, the pair met once more in 2024, when Ma travelled to China as a non-public citizen.
Cheng’s journey is going down in a really completely different context for the KMT as Taiwan’s political panorama has “shifted drastically” over the previous decade, in response to Sanho Chung, a political scientist at Taiwan’s Nationwide Cheng Kung College.
Taiwanese nationalism has surged within the years because the Xi-Ma summit 11 years in the past, whereas the KMT’s political energy has waned. The occasion continues to carry out properly in native elections – due to its deep political networks and lengthy historical past in Taiwan – but it surely misplaced the final three presidential elections in 2016, 2020 and 2024 to the centre-left Democratic Progressive Celebration (DPP).
The KMT has lengthy offered itself because the occasion that may work most successfully with China, however that place has been challenged by the DPP, in response to Chung.
Since taking energy in 2016, the DPP has supplied voters a distinct diplomatic blueprint, he stated, by elevating Taiwan’s worldwide profile whereas strengthening the navy. The DPP has additionally pledged to maintain the “door open” to Chinese language leaders even after Beijing minimize off formal contact with Taipei following the election of President Tsai Ing-wen from the occasion, he stated.
However the previous few years have additionally included a surge in Chinese language navy exercise within the Taiwan Strait – the 180km (112-mile)-wide waterway dividing China and Taiwan – together with six rounds of live-fire navy workout routines since 2022.
The newest drills staged round Taiwan in December 2025 noticed Chinese language forces practise encircling and blockading the island.
A navy gear of the bottom forces takes half in long-range live-fire drills concentrating on waters north of Taiwan, from an undisclosed location on this screenshot from a video launched by the Jap Theatre Command of China’s Folks’s Liberation Military (PLA) on December 30, 2025 [Eastern Theatre Command/Handout via Reuters]
Dialogue or deterrence?
The wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran have left many Taiwanese questioning whether or not a distracted US, Taiwan’s unofficial safety guarantor, would really assist them throughout a future battle with China. US President Donald Trump’s mercurial method to US overseas coverage has sown extra doubt.
Within the face of those issues, the thought of thawing ties with China nonetheless appeals to some voters, stated Wen-ti Sung, a non-resident fellow on the Atlantic Council’s World China Hub. “If Chairperson Cheng can have cordial photograph ops with Xi Jinping, the KMT can use that to argue dialogue is more practical than deterrence,” he advised Al Jazeera.
Over the following week, Taiwanese voters can be ready to see how deftly the KMT’s Cheng manoeuvres round all of the potential pitfalls underlying Taiwanese engagement with China, stated James Chen, an adjunct teacher at Taiwan’s Tamkang College.
Such a diplomatic high-wire act requires Taiwanese leaders to neither absolutely acknowledge China’s claims over Taiwan, a 23.5 million-people democracy, nor antagonise Beijing, whereas additionally probably preserving the door open to future commerce and financial change.
Chen advised Al Jazeera that if the KMT chair can discover her personal approach of “preserving Taiwan’s sovereignty” in her talks and statements with Xi, “she could win the hearts of Taiwanese voters.
“If she will persuade Xi to prioritise peaceable measures in negotiations with Taiwan, the KMT will profit politically as properly,” he stated.
China’s Communist Celebration (CCP) claims Taiwan, whose formal title is the Republic of China, as a province in a territorial dispute that dates again to the Chinese language Civil Struggle, a battle that roiled China from the Nineteen Twenties to the Nineteen Forties. The CCP has promised to reunite the 2 by peace or by drive within the coming many years.
By one estimate, lately, from former US Admiral Philip Davidson, China can be able to invading Taiwan by 2027.
Passing the ‘optics’ check
Regardless of their deep cultural, linguistic and historic ties to China, most Taiwanese would like to stay a de facto unbiased democracy, in response to repeated public opinion polling.
A survey by the Taiwan Public Opinion Basis in October 2025 discovered that solely 13.9 % of respondents supported “unification with China”, versus 44.3 % who supported independence and 24.6 % who supported the “establishment” – which means that Taiwan ought to stay within the diplomatic gray space as de facto unbiased.
The DPP opposes Cheng’s journey, which it sees as a public relations win for Beijing, however its issues are shared by extra centrist members of the KMT who’re extra aligned with the mainstream view on points like Taiwanese identification, in response to Brian Hioe, a non-resident fellow on the College of Nottingham’s Taiwan Analysis Hub.
Cheng was elected KMT chairperson with the help of the occasion’s most conservative factions, however moderates concern she is going to alienate Taiwan’s mainstream voters by showing too carefully aligned with China earlier than native elections in November and the 2028 presidential election, he stated.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an and Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen can be carefully watching Cheng’s assembly with Xi for any missteps, Hioe stated, as they each place themselves as contenders for the upcoming KMT presidential ticket.
The Taiwanese public additionally seems to be doubtful on whether or not the assembly will assist or hurt the KMT.
A March ballot by the platform My Formosa – which conducts month-to-month political surveys in Taiwan – discovered that 56.1 % of respondents believed the assembly can be extra dangerous than useful to the KMT’s election prospects this yr, versus 21.6 % who believed it might assist.
The Atlantic Council’s Sung stated a lot will come right down to the optics of the assembly.
“The extent of reception Beijing will give to the KMT delegation can be essential. A heat reception from Beijing would make Cheng appear to be an in a position diplomat, strengthen her hand, and assist her consolidate the occasion behind her,” he advised Al Jazeera. “Whereas a lukewarm reception might make the visiting KMT appear to be a capitulator or accommodationist, and additional divide the occasion.”
