The office of the former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou said on Sunday that he has made a plan to visit the mainland of China this month.
This visit would be an unprecedented trip and a landmark event as no former or current leader of Taiwan has visited the mainland in over 70 years. Ever since the defeated Republic of China escaped to the island of what we now know as Taiwan in 1949.
Ma Ying-jeou served as the president of Taiwan (Republic of China at the time) from 2008 to 2016. He is a former chairman and current senior member of the Kuomintang.
The KMT is a centre-right to right-wing party in the Republic of China and is the current largest opposition party. The KMT party is a part of the campaign to have friendlier ties with China. Its official stance however is against reunification with the mainland and does not consider itself pro-China.
The visit by the former president is occurring at a time where rising tensions have persisted in the region.
China has showcased intentions to annex the island country of Taiwan and subsume it into the People’s Republic of China as a province. The Chinese government already claims that Taiwan is a part of its sovereign territory, while the Taiwanese ruling government states that they are a sovereign state and not a part of the People’s Republic of China.
China aims to achieve this by means of diplomatic and military pressure as in the past months China has increased its military presence in the area. This presence included surrounding the main island with several days of live-fire military drills last year as a response to the United States’s former speaker Nancy Pelosi doing a surprise visit to Taiwan.
KMT’s deputy chairman Andrew Hsia made a controversial visit to Beijing last month for which he was termed to be ‘courting the communists’.The elections in Taiwan are also due just next year.
The rising tensions in the region along with the recent developments make this planned visit quite controversial and unprecedented.
Ma Ying-jeou’s visit will happen around the time at which the current president of Taiwan Tsai Ing-wen is scheduled to visit the United States. Tsai is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, which is the main opposition for the KMT. She is expected to meet the current US speaker of house Kevin Mcarthy in her visit.
Tsai’s visit will definitely upset Beijing as it opposes any and all legitimacy Taiwan can attain towards its territorial sovereignty.
Hsiao Hsu Tsen, the director of the Ma Ying-jeou foundation said in a press conference in Taipei, that as a part of the visit Ma will be going to Nanjing, Wuhan and Changsha. He specifically stated that Ma will not be going to China’s capital, Beijing. This visit has also been confirmed by the Chinese Taiwan affairs office.
Hsiao also mentioned that Ma will be bringing along Taiwanese students to visit Chinese universities like the Shanghai Fudan University to assist and deepen the understanding of students of both the states.
