President Xi Jinping took a conciliatory tone at a historic meeting in Beijing yesterday with Ma Ying-jeou, the former leader of Taiwan, who is on a peacemaking mission to the Chinese mainland amid cross-strait tensions.
“There is no grudge that cannot be resolved” and “no forces that can separate us,” Xi told Ma, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper. “War would be unbearable for the Chinese nation,” Ma responded.
The two last met in 2015, when Ma was leader of the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) party. The KMT is currently the biggest party in the island’s legislature.
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The meeting showed Beijing’s “determination to solve the Taiwan issue peacefully” according to Zhu Songling, a Taiwan expert at Beijing Union University. He told the Post that the time was now “very favourable” for both sides to carry out dialogue.
The meeting in Beijing is the culmination of Ma’s trip to the mainland. He arrived in Shenzhen on 1 April and has travelled to Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Xian. On Monday he visited a museum in Beijing dedicated to the second Sino-Japanese war, and conveyed an anti-war message, saying that the lessons of history must be learned to “resolve disputes peacefully.”
Beijing has not ruled out force to retake the renegade province of Taiwan if it makes moves to secede, and has labelled the island’s incoming leader William Lai as a “separatist.”
