BEIJING — In an unusual meeting on Friday, China’s leader Xi Jinping spoke with Taiwan’s main opposition leader about shared culture and “bloodlines,” before adding that the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” is a “historical inevitability.”
The meeting with Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of the Nationalist Party, came as tensions in the Taiwan Strait have been rising, driven by stepped-up military drills by China and Beijing’s disdain for American arms sales to the island. It didn’t come with a big new announcement, but the timing—just weeks before President Donald Trump is expected to visit Beijing—suggests Xi is trying to show China can influence Taiwan politically, not only by flexing military muscle.
At a news conference Friday, Cheng didn’t fully embrace or completely reject Beijing’s long-held goal of reunifying with Taiwan. Taiwan, a self-governed island of 23 million people, has lived with fears of a future Chinese military incursion for decades. Cheng said, “We hope to consolidate a stable relationship,” adding that it “must be done step-by-step.” She also told reporters that “General Secretary Xi and I are very pragmatic about this.”
The symbolism wasn’t subtle. Xi and Cheng met in the ornate East Hall at the Great Hall of the People, a space normally used for meeting foreign heads of state. Their handshake underscored how far Cheng’s political stance has shifted. She is 56, and in Taiwan she is now a divisive figure—once, she was a student activist who criticized the party she now leads, the Kuomintang (KMT), known for its warm ties with Beijing.
And even with the optics of reconciliation, the pressure campaign from Beijing has not gone away. Xi’s outreach to Cheng was paired with overt swipes at Taiwan’s current government under President Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing calls a dangerous “separatist” for rejecting China’s claim that Taiwan is its territory. “’Taiwan independence’ is the chief culprit destroying peace in the Taiwan Strait,” Xi said, joined by key members of the Politburo Standing Committee, according to an official readout of his meeting with Cheng. He added: “We absolutely will not tolerate it or allow it.”
One thing that wasn’t openly discussed at the meeting was a major flashpoint in China’s relations with the United States: arms sales. In Taiwan, Cheng’s opposition to Lai’s proposed $40 billion increase in defense spending over the next eight years has stalled approval of the government’s budget. The delay could also jeopardize a $14 billion U.S. arms package already put on hold by the Trump administration to avoid irritating Xi before the May summit. When asked by NBC News if U.S. arms sales to Taiwan came up in Cheng’s meeting with Xi, a KMT representative replied in a text message: “No.”
In the background, it’s hard not to notice how all of this lands on ordinary life. There was a moment—right after the press conference—that the air in Beijing felt heavy and formal, like the building itself was holding its breath. Cheng’s pitch, though, is about avoiding rupture: “We must do everything in our power to prevent a war in the Taiwan Strait,” she told NBC News in an interview last month in Taipei. “Instead of being a troublemaker, we need to be a peacemaker.”
Cheng opened her multiday visit to China on Tuesday with a trip to Nanjing, the capital of China when it was ruled by the KMT. It was after their defeat by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 that the KMT fled to Taiwan, which was never conquered by the Chinese Communist Party. Whether the outreach changes the wider trajectory—especially with drills continuing and U.S. support under question—remains the part that keeps getting pushed forward, step-by-step, but never fully settled.
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