Beijing has sworn to take Taiwan and has not ruled out using force, ramping up military pressure around the island in recent years.
China conducts near-daily deployments of fighter jets and warships near the island and regular large-scale military drills.
Taiwanese lawmakers have been at loggerheads over the government’s plan to spend NT$1.25 trillion (US$39 billion) on defence, which has been stalled for months in parliament, controlled by Cheng’s KMT party.
DEFENCE SPENDING
Cheng’s trip comes a month before US President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing for a summit with Xi.
The United States has been piling pressure on Taiwanese opposition lawmakers to back a proposal for defence purchases, including US weapons, to deter a potential Chinese attack.
Cheng has railed against the government’s proposal, insisting “Taiwan isn’t an ATM” and instead backed a KMT plan to allocate NT$380 billion (US$12 billion) for US weapons with the option for more acquisitions.
While KMT party members regularly fly to China for exchanges with officials, its last leader to visit was Hung Hsiu-chu in 2016.
Cross-strait relations have worsened in particular since the election of Tsai’s successor, Lai Ching-te, who Beijing considers a separatist.
Lai said in a Facebook post on Friday that “China’s … military threats in and around the Taiwan Strait and the island chain have severely undermined regional peace and stability”.
Cheng landed in Shanghai on Tuesday evening, saying shortly after her arrival that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are not doomed to war, as the international community has feared”.
The KMT leader also travelled to the eastern city of Nanjing where she visited the mausoleum of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, one of the few Chinese historical figures revered in both Beijing and Taipei.
Read the full article here
