Cheng Li-wun, the top of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT), is main a delegation to China from April 7 to 12. It’s the primary such go to by a KMT chair in a decade, and Cheng is anticipated to satisfy with Chinese language President Xi Jinping. The KMT, initially the ruling celebration of the Taiwanese dictatorship and vehemently against the Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP), has turn into significantly friendlier to the CCP than Taiwan’s now-ruling Democratic Progressive Occasion (DPP) is.
Many had assumed Cheng’s journey would come solely after U.S. President Donald Trump’s go to to China. As an alternative, after Trump’s journey was postponed, Beijing moved Cheng’s go to ahead. On the floor, this separates the 2 occasions and reinforces Beijing’s declare that Taiwan is a purely home matter for China. But Beijing clearly hopes to make use of Cheng’s journey—particularly a Xi-Cheng assembly—to affect, and maybe alter, a few of Trump’s assumptions about Taiwan.
Cheng Li-wun, the top of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT), is main a delegation to China from April 7 to 12. It’s the primary such go to by a KMT chair in a decade, and Cheng is anticipated to satisfy with Chinese language President Xi Jinping. The KMT, initially the ruling celebration of the Taiwanese dictatorship and vehemently against the Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP), has turn into significantly friendlier to the CCP than Taiwan’s now-ruling Democratic Progressive Occasion (DPP) is.
Many had assumed Cheng’s journey would come solely after U.S. President Donald Trump’s go to to China. As an alternative, after Trump’s journey was postponed, Beijing moved Cheng’s go to ahead. On the floor, this separates the 2 occasions and reinforces Beijing’s declare that Taiwan is a purely home matter for China. But Beijing clearly hopes to make use of Cheng’s journey—particularly a Xi-Cheng assembly—to affect, and maybe alter, a few of Trump’s assumptions about Taiwan.
What Beijing is absolutely contesting is who will get to outline “peace and stability” within the Taiwan Strait and what truly produces it.
The strait has usually been described as one of many world’s most harmful flashpoints. China has repeatedly carried out army workout routines round Taiwan, and tensions have at occasions appeared extreme. But the strait has, broadly talking, remained steady. Washington and the DPP clarify that stability in the identical method: Peace comes from deterrence and stability from energy. Of their telling, it’s the mixed results of U.S. army deterrence in opposition to Beijing and Taiwan’s steadily rising self-defense functionality.
That is constructed into coverage. Final 12 months’s U.S. Nationwide Safety Technique known as for stronger deterrence in opposition to China alongside the primary island chain, of which Taiwan is a key half. The State Division’s fiscal 12 months 2026 price range justification straight hyperlinks enhancing Taiwan’s self-defense functionality, strengthening cross-strait deterrence, and sustaining peace and stability within the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and his administration have echoed the identical logic beneath the slogan of “in search of peace by energy,” tying additional protection spending and stronger social resilience to peace throughout the strait. Trump earlier signed what was described because the largest-ever U.S. arms bundle for Taiwan, and one other, even bigger one is reportedly into account. Taiwan’s legislature can also be reviewing a particular protection price range of $40 billion.
Beijing’s invitation to Cheng is aimed toward breaking this U.S.-Taiwan narrative and reclaiming the authority to offer its personal clarification of what peace and stability within the strait relaxation on. The invitation, issued in Xi’s identify, described Cheng’s journey as meant to “promote the peaceable growth of relations between the Communist Occasion and the Kuomintang and of cross-strait relations.”
At a press convention on April 1, Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Workplace made the purpose much more straight: Peace, growth, exchanges, and cooperation are the mainstream aspirations of Taiwanese society, and so long as the “1992 Consensus” is upheld and “Taiwanese independence” opposed, the strait can stay peaceable and steady; in any other case, tensions and turmoil will comply with. The 1992 Consensus refers to a gathering between the then ruling-KMT and the CCP at which a free settlement was supposedly made—however one whose that means, in typical cross-strait trend, is extraordinarily disputed.
On this case, the important thing interpretation is Beijing’s, which claims that the 2 sides agreed that just one China exists and that China is the Individuals’s Republic. (The KMT, in distinction, acknowledges “completely different interpretations” of “One China.”) However the drive of the assertion lies not within the routine promotion of the 1992 Consensus however in its try to shift the important thing clarification for peace and stability away from U.S. arms gross sales and deterrence and again to the interior political basis of cross-strait relations. Peace, Beijing is claiming, will not be one thing Washington delivers. Stability will not be one thing Taiwan should buy with weapons.
The very first thing a Xi-Cheng assembly would reshape will not be U.S.-China relations however political competitors inside Taiwan over who will get to assert the mantle of peace. For years, the DPP and the US have promoted a easy system: Extra arms purchases, stronger preparedness, and deeper U.S.-Taiwan safety cooperation are the one assure of stability. Cheng’s journey gives a rival system: Acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, resume dialogue, restrain from independence, and peace may also be maintained. That will not persuade most Taiwanese instantly, but it surely does crack the monopoly of the weapons-and-deterrence narrative.
Cheng has echoed that line. Earlier than departing, she stated the journey might mark a primary step towards peace and stability throughout the strait, stressing that “due to the 1992 Consensus, we will create peace,” and that she wished to indicate each Taiwan and the world that battle between the 2 sides will not be inevitable.
Her message carefully parallels Beijing’s. Each find the supply of peace and stability in a shared political basis quite than in exterior deterrence. The distinction is one in all goal. Beijing needs to advance a broader anti-independence, pro-unification framework; Cheng needs to reclaim for the KMT the correct to say that it, too, can handle cross-strait danger.
Beijing is staging a concrete scene for the surface world: Earlier than Trump has arrived in China and earlier than Washington has made any new Taiwan-related transfer on this interval, the 2 sides of the strait can already resume high-level political contact beneath the 1992 framework with none want for outdoor intervention. On the very least, this reveals that communication and de-escalation are doable. Beijing’s message to Washington is straightforward: Even with out new U.S. arms gross sales or recent deterrent alerts, the strait has not devolved into chaos.
This doesn’t imply U.S. army deterrence has no impact on Beijing’s personal calculations. What it needs to indicate is that deterrence doesn’t present the decisive clarification for peace and stability within the strait. Navy strain might have an effect on Beijing’s danger evaluation, but it surely can’t by itself create political belief throughout the strait. Arms gross sales might strengthen Taiwan’s defenses, however they can’t substitute for a political mechanism of communication.
That’s the distinction Beijing needs to drive into view. Washington and Taipei might proceed to argue that deterrence is helpful, however actual peace and stability don’t truly come from deterrence. So long as the authorities in Taiwan refuse to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, no quantity of U.S. weaponry can produce real stability. At finest, it might maintain a fragile equilibrium, not the sort of stability Beijing is attempting to venture—one based mostly on communication, de-escalation, and manageability.
This additionally explains why Beijing has tried to de-Americanize its public dealing with of Cheng’s journey. Chinese language state media and the Taiwan Affairs Workplace have framed it as a matter of KMT-CCP relations, cross-strait relations, and mainstream opinion in Taiwan, not as a subplot in U.S.-China rivalry. Officers have even emphasised that affairs throughout the strait are a “household matter” for Chinese language on either side.
Beijing doesn’t anticipate this argument to steer Trump to scale back arms gross sales or essentially revise U.S. Taiwan coverage. Its extra lifelike objective is to make him see that Lai and the pro-independence camp don’t symbolize all of Taiwan and that there stays an necessary political drive on the island prepared to oppose formal independence, interact in dialogue, and help peaceable cross-strait growth.
Taiwanese society is unlikely to simply accept that argument in full. Washington nearly definitely won’t both. However as soon as Beijing has demonstrated its case by a real high-level interplay quite than slogans alone, it turns into more durable for the US to insist that peace and stability within the Taiwan Strait are outlined totally by Washington and defined solely by U.S. deterrence.
