(Beijing) Chinese President Xi Jinping declared Wednesday during a meeting in Beijing with a former leader of Taiwan that “external interference” cannot hinder the reunification of the island with mainland China.
A supporter of appeasement with the mainland authorities, former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, aged 73, served two terms from 2008 to 2016.
He started on 1er April a tour of mainland China which he described as a “peace trip” in order to ease bilateral tensions.
This meeting between Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou is the first since an unprecedented summit between the two leaders in 2015 in Singapore, when the Taiwanese president was still in power.
“The differences between our (political) systems cannot change the objective fact that we belong to the same country and the same nation,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Ma on Wednesday, according to a video broadcast by Taiwanese channel TVBS.
“External interference will not be able to prevent the great historic cause of our meeting,” he stressed.
China considers Taiwan to be one of its provinces, which it has not yet managed to reunify with the rest of its territory since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
She says she favors “peaceful” reunification with the island, where some 23 million inhabitants live governed by a democratic system.
But it has never renounced the use of military force, particularly in the event of a formal declaration of independence for the island.
“Reduce hostility”
Ma Ying-jeou comes from the Kuomintang party, historically more open to dialogue with Beijing, because it was itself created in mainland China at the beginning of the 20th century.
The former Taiwanese president leads a delegation of around twenty students from the island and visited technology companies, universities and historical sites in China during his visit.
Before his departure, he indicated that his trip aimed to “reduce hostility” and create a more favorable climate for “goodwill” with Beijing.
During his two terms, Ma Ying-jeou worked to improve bilateral ties.
But since the election in 2016 of Tsai Ing-wen, who claims that the island is already de facto independent and pleads for looser cultural ties with mainland China, relations have been strained again.
And the election in January as president of its outgoing vice-president, Lai Ching-te, who is on the same line, is unlikely to ease tensions, Beijing having described him as a “dangerous separatist”. He will take office in May.