Taiwan’s ex President Ma Ying-jeou to make historic visit to mainland China

• Taiwan’s former President Ma Ying-jeou will visit mainland China next week.
• China’s governing Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan.
• Taiwan’s next presidential election is slated for January of next year.

Taiwan’s former President Ma Ying-jeou will visit mainland China next week, making him the first former Taiwanese leader to do so since the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949.

Ma, a senior member of Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) opposition party, will visit mainland China between March 27 and April 7, according to a statement issued by his foundation on Sunday.

According to the foundation, he will pay his respects to his ancestors in southern Hunan province and lead a group of Taiwanese students to connect with peers from mainland China in a number of locations.

While the trip is purportedly private, it is rich in historical meaning and comes at a time when tensions over Taiwan’s future are rising.

China’s governing Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan, but it claims the self-governed island democracy as its own and has repeatedly refused to rule out a military takeover.

At the end of the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong’s Communist Party took control of mainland China, while the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, with both sides claiming to be the legitimate representative of China for the next several decades, until Taiwan’s transition to democracy in the 1990s.

Nonetheless, connections between Beijing and the KMT have been increasingly close in recent decades, reaching a pinnacle under Ma’s presidency.

Ma was Taiwan’s president from 2008 to 2016, during which time he strengthened economic connections between China and the democratically run island while resisting Beijing’s desire for reunification.

Protests and a significant voter reaction erupted in response to his perceived closeness to Beijing, notably on the economic front.

The KMT has lost the previous two elections to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which is far more critical of Beijing and opposes the implicit agreement that all sides recognise they are part of “one China,” but with differing views of what that implies.

After the DPP assumed office in 2016, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has increased economic, political, and military pressure on Taiwan.

Ma’s historic journey comes amid a tense geopolitical background, as Taiwan and the US step up efforts to challenge China’s rising military capabilities.

His visit will also take place at a politically difficult moment. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen will soon visit the United States on her way to diplomatic allies in South America, according to an official from Taiwan’s Overseas Community Affairs Council who spoke to parliamentarians earlier this month. US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has also stated that he intends to meet with her when she is in the country.

Taiwan’s next presidential election is slated for January of next year. Tsai is not a re-election candidate.

Fears of a Chinese invasion have hung over Taiwan for more than seven decades, but they have been heightened by Xi’s growing aggression as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The KMT has always refused to be labelled as a “pro-Beijing” party. Yet, its leaders, particularly Ma, have frequently emphasised the need of improving relationships.

Last month, KMT deputy chairman Andrew Hsia travelled to Beijing to meet with senior Communist Party leader Wang Huning.

China, on the other hand, has cut off formal communication with Taiwan’s Tsai administration.

Ma and Xi met face to face in Singapore in 2015, the first meeting between leaders of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party since the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War, but not on either side of the strait.

According to Ma’s foundation, a meeting between Xi and Ma is not currently scheduled for the trip.

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