Overview
- Xi met Taiwan’s main opposition leader, Kuomintang chair Cheng Li-wun, in Beijing in remarks Friday, calling unification a “historical inevitability.”
- Cheng said opposing formal independence could prevent war and urged institutionalized peace talks and closer cooperation between the KMT and China’s Communist Party.
- The encounter marked the first top-level KMT contact in China in about a decade, following Cheng’s stops in Shanghai and Jiangsu earlier in the week.
- In Taipei, the KMT-led opposition is blocking a plan to expand the defense budget, creating a parliamentary roadblock for President Lai Ching-te’s government.
- Taiwan’s leaders criticized the trip, with Lai warning China’s military threats erode regional peace, and Washington is watching ahead of a planned Xi–Trump meeting in May.