Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou will go to China this month, his workplace stated on Sunday, the primary time a former or contemporary Taiwanese chief has visited for the reason that defeated Republic of China authorities fled to the island in 1949. The experience can be at a time of heightened tensions among Beijing and Taipei as China continues up its navy and political strain to try to get democratically-elected Taiwan to just accept Chinese sovereignty.
Ma, who stays a senior member of Taiwan`s Kuomintang (KMT) competition party, held a landmark assembly with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore in past due 2015, rapidly earlier than contemporary Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen became elected. Ma’s workplace stated that he might go to China from March 27 to April 7 and visit the towns of Nanjing, Wuhan, Changsha, Chongqing and Shanghai.
He will meet college students and go to webweb sites related to World War Two and China’s war with Japan in addition to the ones associated with the 1911 revolution which overthrew the closing Chinese emperor and ushered withinside the Republic of China, his workplace stated. The Republic of China stays Taiwan’s professional name.
It did now no longer say if he might meet any Chinese officers or leaders, which include whether or not he might meet Xi. The KMT, which historically favours near ties with China however strongly denies being pro-Beijing, has been stepping up its engagement with China seeing that each China and Taiwan eased COVID-associated tour restrictions.
Last month the KMT’s deputy chairman Andrew Hsia visited Beijing and met with senior Communist Party chief Wang Huning. Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) seized on Hsia’s China experience to assault the KMT for being too near Beijing and trying to promote out Taiwan, and criticised Hsia for going to “pay courtroom docket to the communists”.
The KMT says it’s far vital to maintain traces of conversation open with China, specially given the contemporary tensions. China has rebuffed repeated calls from Tsai for talks, believing her to be a separatist. She says most effective Taiwan’s human beings can determine their destiny and rejects China’s sovereignty claims.