Top KMT official heads to Beijing amid tensions over Taiwan

Taiwan’s main opposition party will send a top official to mainland China for rare high-level talks amid political rumblings at home and growing tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

The Kuomintang (KMT) announced that vice chairperson Andrew Hsia (夏立言 Xià Lìyán) and his delegation will visit between February 8 and 17 to speak with with Sòng Tāo 宋涛, the newly-elected head of the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, and other senior officials. Hsia will visit Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongqing and Chengdu.

“The KMT’s approach to peace and prosperity is to deescalate cross-Strait tensions by engaging China and making periodic visits to Beijing,” Elizabeth Larus, adjunct fellow at the Pacific Forum, told The China Project.

The KMT said that the meeting will “reflect Taiwan’s latest public concerns about the security of the Taiwan Strait and expectations for regional peace and stability.” Given current tensions, “it is natural not to sit idly by,” it added.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said the KMT had informed it of the trip, saying that “any politicians visiting China must reflect the will of Taiwanese to maintain democracy and peace.”

KMT under reform

Hsia last visited China in August 2022, shortly after Beijing conducted war games near Taiwan in retaliation over then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s surprise visit to Taipei. Despite his efforts to criticize the PLA’s military drills, Hsia came under fire for “pandering” to Beijing and was widely condemned by Taiwan’s ruling government, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The KMT, also known as the Chinese Nationalist Party, has come under increasing scrutiny at home and abroad for being “pro-Beijing.” While the KMT has long pushed for closer ties with China, the party has fallen out of favor with Taiwan’s new generation of voters, many of whom strongly believe in defending the island’s sovereignty and freedoms.

However, Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安 Jiǎng Wàn’ān), the 44-year-old great-grandson of former KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek (蒋介石 Jiǎng Jièshí), nabbed a largely symbolic, but landslide win in local elections against rival DPP last November.

But “neither the KMT nor DPP are very popular with the Taiwan public these days,” Larus told The China Project. “The DPP took a drubbing in the November 2022 local elections, with Taiwan voters dissatisfied with [President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文 Cài Yīngwén)] attempts to make the elections about the China threat, revelations about the expense of COVID vaccines, and some plagiarism allegations.”

The KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing control to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in a brutal civil war. Despite ruling the island for 50 years, the KMT again fell out of power largely due to its fundamental position on the 1992 Consensus, which claims that the CCP and Taiwan have different interpretations of “one China.”

“The KMT leaders are using some of the political capital the party gained from the elections to open lines of communication with Beijing,” Larus told The China Project. “Neither the DPP nor the KMT seek confrontation with Beijing, but Tsai’s refusal to accept the so-called ’92 Consensus made her persona non grata in Beijing.”

Foreign delegations to Taiwan add fuel to fire

Meanwhile, Swiss lawmakers are currently paying a visit to Taipei in a bid to deepen bilateral ties, marking the latest foreign delegation to draw Beijing’s ire. The trip comes despite the fact that Switzerland abides by the “one China” policy and does not recognize Taiwan as an independent state.

“China’s threats to Taiwan’s security have garnered Taiwan the attention and support from parties that had previously beaten down the door to China,” Larus told The China Project. “Legislators from Switzerland, like those from Czechia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Prague, Australia, Japan, and the United States, among others, have become fatigued with China’s ‘wolf warrior’ smack-down type of diplomacy every time their governments do or say something positive about Taiwan.”

Later in March, the speaker of the Czech parliament will also pay a visit to Taiwan, the latest sign that Central and Eastern European governments are losing trust in Beijing. Czech President-elect, Petr Pavel, forged ahead with a phone call to Tsai on January 30, “despite China’s repeated dissuasion and démarches,” per the Chinese foreign ministry.

“Foreign legislators are fêted in Taipei…and then go home to their constituents and say that they visited Taiwan and stood up for democracy,” Larus said. “Not having diplomatic relations with Taiwan is a non-issue. Only 14 entities have normal relations with Taiwan, leaving out most of the world. However, most countries, like the U.S., have robust unofficial relations, namely trade relations, with Taiwan. Diplomatic relations are not a condition of government or business visit.”