The leader of Taiwan’s largest opposition party arrived in China at the invitation of Xi Jinping on Tuesday for a “peace mission” at a time of increased military tensions between the self-governed island and the mainland.
Cheng Li-wun’s trip marks the first visit by a Kuomintang (KMT) leader to China in a decade, although Beijing is yet to confirm whether the Chinese president will definitely meet her.
Cheng said at her party headquarters in Taipei she had embarked on a “historic journey for peace”, but added that some people feel uneasy about the visit. “If you truly love Taiwan, you will seize even the slightest chance, every possible opportunity, to keep Taiwan from being ravaged by war,” the KMT chief said in defence of her visit. China sees Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out reunification by force, if necessary.
The trip, which comes just weeks ahead of US president Donald Trump’s May visit to Beijing, has sparked concerns among the Taiwanese people who anticipate a territorial conquest by China sometime in the near future. The threat of invasion has been a major concern for Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te’s administration as well.
Lai, viewed as a separatist figure by Beijing, has called for ramping up Taiwan’s defence capabilities and bolstering the self-governed island’s defence budget, drawing lessons from multiple conflicts around the world, including the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Cheng-led opposition bloc, which dominates parliament, has also been accused of blocking a $40bn special defence budget since November 2025, which Lai has been pushing for to bolster Taiwan’s military muscle against China’s People's Liberation Army.
Before leaving for China, Cheung said: "So I would rather believe that all Taiwanese people hope this trip will succeed, because we can transform the most dangerous place in the world into the safest place in the world.
"I believe that through this journey for peace, everyone is even more eager to see the sincerity and determination of the CPC (Communist Party of China) Central Committee to use peaceful dialogue and exchange to resolve all possible differences between the two sides," she added.
The Taiwanese official took a train to Nanjing, which hosts the mausoleum of Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen. Sun, the father of the revolution that toppled China's last emperor in 1911, died in 1925, and is a hero in China despite being the former leader of the Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, defeated by the Communists in 1949.
The head of China’s Taiwan Affairs office, Song Tao, and Cheng “chatted cordially like friends” on the train, with the KMT leader calling her trip “especially rare and precious”, the party said.
Cheng did not address the increasing military escalation from across the Taiwan Strait where China has been sending warplanes and naval vessels around the smaller island on a near-daily basis. China’s PLA forces have also recently staged two major military exercises around the island, with the most recent one in December, after the US announced arms sales to Taiwan and involved the deployment of air, naval and missile units for a joint live-fire drill.
The US State Department said PLA’s exercises "increase tensions unnecessarily" and called on Beijing to cease military pressure against Taiwan.
Late on Monday, Kuan Bi-ling, head of Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council, which runs the coast guard, posted a picture on her Facebook account of current Chinese warship deployments around the island – two off the east coast, and one each to the north, northwest and southwest.
"When you depart, you are doing so from within what they see as the 'Taiwan cage'," Kuan told reporters at parliament on Tuesday, referring to how China's military has termed Taiwan's planned T-Dome air defence system and talking about Cheng's trip.
Lawmakers in Taiwan slammed the visit, saying that the opposition leader is following the steps China wants her to. “From the fact that the accompanying journalists were chosen by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, to the use of a Chinese aircraft, and even the uncertainty before departure over whether she would be able to meet president Xi, KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wen’s visit to China was, from the moment she boarded the plane, locked into the ‘One China’ framework,” said Fan Yun, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Cheng, she said, could very well be a model figure for Xi’s propaganda on “One China” policy.
The opposition, according to the lawmaker, is ignoring the obvious ground reality as public opinion polls in Taiwan show that support for unification has fallen below 10 per cent.
“The mainstream view in Taiwan is that Taiwan (Republic of China) and China (People's Republic of China) are not subordinate to each other,” she tells The Independent, adding that while peace is “something all Taiwanese people support, but we learn from history that peace must be backed by strength”.
Regional experts say the trip serves Cheng little but benefits China more.
“Cheng’s visit won’t fundamentally change China’s calculation and preparation for a potential reunification with Taiwan. For Beijing, her trip primarily serves propaganda and diplomatic signalling purposes,” says William Yang, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst.
For Xi’s domestic audience, the visit will display the government's progress on the mission of reunification with Taiwan, he says.
“Cheng's remarks during the trip, which will focus on calling for peace and reiterating her opposition to Taiwan independence, will be amplified by Chinese state media to try to exacerbate division within Taiwan,” he says.
Some leading figures in her own party are also worried that her rhetoric during the trip could damage the party’s prospects in the local election in November. “Despite these criticisms and diverging views within her party, there are also some in Taiwan who view her trip as a necessary step to help reduce the level of tension across the Taiwan Strait,” Yang says.
China will use the trip to demonstrate to the US “that there are still political leaders in Taiwan who are willing to conduct cross-strait exchange and pursue peace across the Taiwan Strait”, he says.
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