There’s only one way to resolve the Taiwan question

Last week, the leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), the Taiwanese conservative opposition party, paid a six-day visit to mainland China. Invited personally by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Cheng Li-wun traveled through Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing in what became the first high-level meeting between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the KMT in a decade.

Relations across the Taiwan Strait have entered their most dangerous phase in years. China’s national rejuvenation is accelerating, the US is intensifying its strategic competition with Beijing, and separatist forces on the island have become increasingly emboldened. Against this background, the meeting between Xi and Cheng signaled the re-emergence of the only political channel with a proven record of reducing tensions and preserving stability.

The KMT and the CPC may differ on many matters, but both understand a basic reality that the current authorities in Taipei refuse to acknowledge: there is only one Chinese nation, and the future of both sides of the Strait depends on avoiding confrontation.

The Taiwanese authorities’ outcry

Predictably, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party denounced Cheng’s trip. DPP figures accused her of being “subservient” to Beijing and portrayed the visit as a betrayal. Yet these attacks revealed less about Cheng than about the DPP’s own political predicament.

Since Tsai Ing-wen entered office in 2016, the DPP has systematically dismantled the political foundations that had previously kept cross-Strait relations stable. Beijing cut off high-level communication with Taiwan after Tsai refused to endorse the principle that both sides belong to one Chinese nation, expressed politically through the 1992 Consensus. What followed was a downward spiral of mistrust, military tension and diplomatic isolation.

The DPP has attempted to compensate for this failure by drawing Taiwan ever deeper into foreign geopolitical plays. Taipei has strengthened military coordination with the US and expanded its cooperation with Israel’s defense sector. It has deepened political and security ties with Japan while quietly extending support to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, effectively aligning the island with the broader Western bloc.

These policies have not made Taiwan safer. On the contrary, they have transformed it into a front line in Washington’s containment strategy against China. The more the DPP binds Taiwan to external powers, the more it erodes the possibility of peaceful development across the Strait.

For the DPP and its foreign allies, preserving hostility is politically useful. Tension allows them to justify higher military spending, closer foreign dependence and the illusion that Taiwan can indefinitely move toward formal independence without any consequences. But for ordinary people on the island, this strategy offers only risk, instability and economic pressure.