China's Xi and former Taiwanese President Ma meet in Beijing

Chinese President Xi Jinping received former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday, where Xi said both sides of the Taiwan Strait should pursue “reunification.”

Media reports previously believed the two would meet on Monday. Some analysts have suggested the meeting was brought forward to coincide with US President Joe Biden's summit with his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida in Washington, DC.

The Republic of China, the official name of Taiwan's government, fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949. The Chinese Communist Party claims sovereignty over the self-governing island and has pledged to one day unify with her, by force if necessary.

Wednesday marked Xi's second face-to-face meeting with Ma, who made headlines in 2015 when he became the first Taiwanese leader to meet his Chinese counterpart since the split. Ma is a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), Taiwan's main opposition party, which officially favors closer ties with Beijing without unification.

At Wednesday's meeting, Xi emphasized that “compatriots” on both sides of the 90-mile-wide strait share a lineage as well as a common history and culture, China's Taiwan Affairs Office wrote.

The two sides of the Strait should firmly oppose separatist activities related to “Taiwan independence” and interference by external forces, firmly safeguard the common homeland of the Chinese nation, and jointly pursue peaceful reunification, he said. -he adds.

Ma said the 1992 Consensus and opposition to Taiwan independence are the pillars of peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait. The 1992 Consensus is a term coined years later for a meeting in which Chinese and Taiwanese officials agreed that there was “one China.” As to which side the real China was on, that was left to interpretation.

China insists that the so-called consensus is a prerequisite for resuming the warmer cross-Strait relations seen under the Ma administration. Taiwan's current president, Tsai Ing-wen, maintains that this event was a “historical fact” rather than a binding agreement – ​​a position that angered China.

Beijing characterizes the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has won three consecutive presidential victories since 2016, as part of a fringe group out of step with majority opinion, even though a recent poll suggests that only about 12% of voters Taiwanese are in favor of a unification approach. with their neighbor.

China said Taiwan's formal declaration of independence would trigger war. Tsai said such a statement was unnecessary because Taiwan is already an independent state.

Ma arrived in China on April 1 as a private citizen, leading a delegation of young KMT members aiming to ease tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

His visit received a mixed reception in his country.

Fan Yun, a national lawmaker from Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, said News week she was disappointed by Mom's visit.

“I must emphasize that Mr. Ma was used as a tool by the Chinese Communist Party for its united front strategies,” she said, adding that her brief meeting with Xi not only “lacked any new perspective” , but that it was public “loss of integrity.

She accused Ma of willingly allowing himself to be used by Xi to distract from Biden's meeting with Kishida and said the former leader counts only a small pro-unification minority in Taiwan among his supporters.

“Ma Ying-jeou was once a democratically elected president of Taiwan. By embracing his Chinese dream and abandoning democracy, he shamed the freedom achieved at the cost of the lives of so many predecessors in Taiwan,” he said. she declared.

News week contacted the KMT and the Chinese Embassy in the United States via written requests for comment.

“I think the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is taking full advantage of Ma in the sense that they were able to move their meeting to coincide with the U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral meeting,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist and assistant professor. at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said News week.

“It kind of shows that this is much more of a political signal from the CCP than just a matter of friendship between the Republic of China (Republic of China) and the PRC (People's Republic of China), which I think they initially tried to characterize this meeting as,” Nachman said.

Biden and Kishida are expected to meet with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos on Thursday in the countries' first tripartite summit. Concerns about China's military expansion in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to be at the heart of their discussions.