A top Chinese official told a senior Taiwan opposition figure on Feb. 10 that both China’s Communist Party (CCP) and Taiwan’s friendly opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) should oppose “Taiwan independence” and “interference by external forces.”
Wang Huning, the CCP’s fourth ranked leader, told Andrew Hsia, Taiwan’s opposition KMT’s deputy chairman, during a meeting in Beijing that both parties should “maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait,” China’s state television reported. This statement is in the face of consistent aggression and threats of take over by the CCP toward the self-governed liberal democratic Chinese island.
The CCP claims that democratically-ruled Taiwan is a breakaway province of China and has stepped up military and diplomatic pressure to get the island to accept its socialist rule. Taiwan’s government says only the Taiwanese people can decide their future.
Taiwan’s China-policy making Mainland Affairs Council, responding to the meeting, said cross-strait exchanges should be based on equality and mutual respect, and that authoritarianism is “incompatible” with democracy, peace, and stability.
“Senior Chinese Communist Party officials must think about constructive, meaningful and pragmatic ways to handle” relations, it said in a statement.
Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has seized on Hsia’s China trip to attack the KMT for being too close to Beijing and wanting to sell out Taiwan’s freedoms, and has criticised Hsia for going to “pay court to the communists.”
The KMT traditionally favours close ties with China. It denies being pro-Beijing.
Taiwanese will head to the voting booth in 2024, when the DPP and KMT will go head to head for leadership of the island.
Wang is one of just two top officials reappointed to join Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the elite seven-man Politburo Standing Committee at a party congress last year, and is the party’s top theoretician.
In Xi’s third leadership term, Wang is on track to be in charge of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference when a government reshuffle takes place next month, an advisory body which has an important role in working with—and co-opting—non-communists, as well as people from Taiwan.
The CCP has not spoken with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration since she took office in 2016, believing she is a “separatist,” and has rebuffed frequent calls from Tsai for dialogue to resume.
The CCP says Tsai has to accept that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to China under its “One-China principle,” which she has refused to do.
