BEIJING/TAIPEI, March 30 (Reuters) – The leader of Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), will visit China in April after being invited by Chinese President Xi Jinping, a trip that will come a month before U.S. President Donald Trump goes to Beijing for his own summit.
Former lawmaker Cheng Li-wun won election as KMT chairwoman in October and has signalled a swing towards even closer ties with Beijing than her predecessor Eric Chu, who did not visit China during his term as chairman that began in 2021.
China, which views democratic Taiwan as its own territory, refuses to speak to the government of President Lai Ching-te, who it calls a “separatist”, but regularly welcomes senior KMT officials, and Cheng had said she was planning on going.
In a statement on Monday, the KMT said that Cheng was grateful for the invitation and had “gladly” accepted it.
Cheng “expressed hope that the two parties (the KMT and China’s Communist Party) would work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, strengthen cross-strait exchanges and cooperation, secure peace in the Taiwan Strait, and enhance the well-being of the people”, it added.
Chinese state news agency Xinhua said that Cheng would visit from April 7 to 12 and go to Beijing, Shanghai and the eastern province of Jiangsu.
The announcement comes at a time when Lai’s government is trying to get Taiwan’s opposition-majority Parliament to approve an extra $40 billion in defence spending.
The KMT has said it supports strengthening Taiwan’s defences but it will not sign “blank cheques” and wants more details from the government.
Trump, whose administration has strongly backed Taiwan’s increased defence spending plans, is due in China in mid-May for a meeting that was postponed from early April due to the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran. China has yet to confirm the trip.
Both Xinhua and the KMT referred to Xi by his title as general secretary of the Communist Party rather than as head of state.
The defeated Republic of China government, led at the time by the KMT, fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists. No peace treaty or armistice has ever been signed and neither formally recognises each other’s government.
In late 2015, Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, also from the KMT, held a landmark meeting with Xi in Singapore.
(Reporting by Beijing newsroom and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Thomas Derpinghaus)
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