Taiwan opposition KMT leader says he’s in no rush for Beijing meeting

‘The timing needs to be right’ and it has to be beneficial for the island, according to Johnny Chiang
He also says proposals to get Taipei to accept communist rule have ‘no market’ there

Taiwan

Reuters

Published: 5:44pm, 2 Mar 2021

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The leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party the Kuomintang on Tuesday said he was in no rush to travel to the mainland to meet President Xi Jinping, and that Beijing’s proposals to get Taipei to accept communist rule had “no market” on the island.

The KMT ruled China before retreating to Taiwan at the end of a civil war with the communists in 1949. While ties across the Taiwan Strait have improved dramatically in the last three decades, Beijing continues to claim Taiwan as its own territory.

The KMT was trounced in presidential and parliamentary elections last year, unable to shake accusations by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party that they were Beijing’s lackey.

Johnny Chiang, elected as leader following the party’s defeat, said that he was in no hurry to follow his predecessor’s footsteps and visit Beijing to meet the Communist Party, and its leader Xi.

“We can wait, for a better timing. There’s no insistence for it. It’s not just a meeting for a meeting’s sake, but it needs to be meaningful, respectful,” he said at party headquarters in central Taipei, adding the pandemic also made travel hard now.

“The timing needs to be right, but more importantly there needs to be the precondition of equality and dignity, and it has to be beneficial for Taiwan.”

Chiang said they were maintaining routine contacts with the Communist Party, but there had been no high-level communication.

Taiwan’s then-president Ma Ying-jeou (left) meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Singapore in 2015. Photo: AFP

Xi met then-president Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore in 2015 in a landmark meeting, shortly before current President Tsai Ing-wen first won power. That meeting was cast as a meeting between the heads of the Communist Party and the KMT rather than one between heads of state.

But political trust has “collapsed” since then, with small issues turning into slanging matches between Taipei and Beijing, said Chiang.

He faces an uphill struggle to win back voter support at a time when Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan is unrelenting and many electors view the KMT – whose name literally translates as Chinese Nationalist Party – as not properly Taiwanese.

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In July he faces re-election as party leader, though he reiterated he has no interest in running for president and would rather serve as a “kingmaker” in choosing its candidate for elections in 2024.

But being firm with Beijing will be an important test of whether the KMT can get back into power – Chiang described the mainland as the major threat Taiwan faces.

Chiang said that Beijing’s offer of using “one country, two systems” to entice Taiwan with a high degree of autonomy, like how it is supposed to run unrest-hit Hong Kong, has “no market” on the island, where people like their freedoms.

“We are already used to this kind of lifestyle. If you want Taiwan’s people to change it – impossible.”

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