Can Taiwanese opposition leader pull off balancing act during US trip?
KMT chair Cheng Li-wun’s visit follows a recent meeting with Xi Jinping but she has a tough task selling her cross-strait vision in America
Taiwan’s main opposition leader is due to arrive in the United States late on Monday for a politically sensitive two-week visit expected to attract close scrutiny in Beijing, Taipei and Washington.
She will also travel to Boston and New York before visiting Washington for meetings with political figures and think tanks that will form the centrepiece of her visit.
The KMT has yet to disclose whom specifically Cheng will meet.
It is the first visit to the US by a KMT leader in nearly two years and follows her high-profile trip to mainland China in April. There, she met President Xi Jinping, who urged patience on the issue of reunification and called for more cross-strait exchanges.
It was the first meeting between the heads of the Communist Party and KMT in a decade. Days later, Beijing announced a package of 10 measures aimed at promoting exchanges with Taiwan that appeared designed to bolster Cheng politically.
Cheng’s US trip also comes just over two weeks after Xi met Donald Trump in Beijing and warned the US president that any mishandling of the Taiwan issue could lead to an “extremely dangerous situation”.
Analysts expressed caution about the outcome of Cheng’s visit. Trump’s Taiwan policy is unclear in the wake of his meeting with Xi and the US leader has yet to approve a US$14 billion arms package for the island that risks angering Beijing. Taipei has insisted it was confident the deal would be approved eventually.
Trump also said after the Beijing summit that he was not looking to have “somebody go independent”, adding: “You know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles (15,300km) to fight a war. I’m not looking for that.”
Beijing regards Taiwan as part of China and has never renounced the use of force to reunify it with the mainland.
Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington opposes any attempt to change the status quo by force and is committed to supplying the island with defensive weapons.
Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University of China, said “Beijing has nothing to see with pleasure” regarding Cheng’s visit to Washington.
The KMT, Shi said, “desires an absolute peace rather than any unification, pursues US arms sales to Taiwan and wants to make Trump believe that it, rather than the [ruling] DPP, would [better represent] his interests”.
Xin Qiang, a professor and deputy director of the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University, said that Cheng’s trip to the US was primarily intended to explain to Washington the KMT’s “position on maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait”.
“The KMT hopes to strengthen communication with the US and dispel Washington’s doubts or dissatisfaction regarding KMT policies,” Xin said.
Washington has repeatedly called on Taipei to increase defence spending and Shi said Cheng would have to “show more subjugation to Trump’s economic and military demands on Taiwan, promising a lot of money and further increases in the defence budget”.
Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Chen Binhua said last Wednesday that Taiwan was a matter “for Chinese people on both sides of the strait and [an issue that] brooked no outside interference” – wording that was read as a veiled objection to her visit.
But Xin argued that if Cheng could convince Washington of the importance of opposing Taiwanese independence for the stability of US-Beijing relations during her visit, “Beijing would welcome such an outcome”.
Cross-strait relations have deteriorated since Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party came to power in 2016.
Ties worsened further when William Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing has branded a “stubborn separatist”, was elected to take over the leadership in 2024.
The mainland-friendly KMT’s next chance to take power comes in the 2028 elections.
The issue of arms sales is likely to dominate Cheng’s visit to Washington, according to Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific programme.
On Saturday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Shangri-La defence forum in Singapore that any decision about future Taiwan arms sales would rest with Trump although he insisted US policy had not changed.
“Officials, lawmakers, and think tank experts will have lots of questions for KMT chair Cheng,” Glaser said.
Early in May, the KMT and the smaller opposition Taiwan People’s Party backed a NT$780 billion (US$26 billion) special defence budget, much less than the DPP’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion but more than twice the baseline Cheng had proposed.
Glaser said Cheng would have to tread a fine line and was “likely” to try to avoid being labelled as “pro-China” in the US.
The KMT leader has recently championed a “new road map” for cross-strait stability that she argues serves US interests while preserving Taiwan’s strategic autonomy.
Glaser said her pitch that Taiwan need not choose between Beijing and Washington was “a difficult sell” in the US, but “to gain the support of the majority of voters in Taiwan, she must be seen as able to manage the relationship with the United States”.