Xi Jinping met Cheng \u200cLi-wun<\/a>, chairwoman of Taiwan’s largest opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) in Beijing, where Xi said he “absolutely would not tolerate” independence for Taiwan, which China views as its own territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCheng has portrayed her \u200bvisit as a reconciliation mission to lessen tensions, and told Xi \u200bshe looked forward to the KMT and Communist Party advancing the “institutionalisation” \u2060of peace across the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taiwan’s defence ministry, in its daily report on \u200bChinese military activity in the previous 24 hours, said that 16 Chinese warplanes flew \u200bnear the island from mid-morning to mid-afternoon on Friday. Xi and Cheng met at 11 am (0300GMT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shen Yu-chung, a deputy minister at Taiwan’s China-policy-making Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters in Taipei on \u200bSaturday that using military coercion against Taiwan as a means of applying pressure \u200bfor political negotiations has always been China’s “go-to tactic”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So on one hand we see them sending \u200cout messages \u2060of peace, while on the other hand they continue to use military force to pressure Taiwan without letup,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Beijing, KMT Vice Chairman Chang Jung-kung said that the \u200bkey to promoting peace \u200blies in offering \u2060Taiwan’s people a choice between peace and reconciliation, or war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Engaging with China and promoting cross-strait peace yields “peace with dignity,” not \u200bthe bowing of one’s head to “shake hands” like Taiwan President \u200bLai Ching-te \u2060has said, Chang added, according to a KMT statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lai’s office said on Friday night that what the Xi-Cheng meeting sought to highlight was that “Taiwan is part of the \u2060People’s \u200bRepublic of China” and to advance “the annexation of \u200bTaiwan”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reuters) TAIPEI, April 11 – Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Saturday that it spotted 16 Chinese warplanes operating near the island the previous day, around the same time China’s president was \u200bmeeting the Taiwanese opposition leader. Late on Friday morning, Chinese President Xi Jinping met Cheng \u200cLi-wun, chairwoman of Taiwan’s largest opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) in Beijing, where Xi said he “absolutely would not tolerate” independence for Taiwan, which China views as its own territory. Cheng has portrayed her \u200bvisit as a reconciliation mission to lessen tensions, and told Xi \u200bshe looked forward to the KMT and Communist Party advancing… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56438,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56439,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56437\/revisions\/56439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}