Cheng Li-wun’s visit to China a gambit for political capital

BEIJING - When Taiwanese opposition leader Cheng Li-wun sat down for lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first dish served was a Fujian clam stewed in chicken broth.

“General secretary Xi told me this was the same dish served at a state banquet for then US President Richard Nixon,” the Kuomintang (KMT) chairperson told reporters after the lunch in Beijing on April 10.

Her reference to the dish was telling. Nixon’s 1972 visit paved the way for eventual normalisation of diplomatic ties between Washington and Beijing. Was Ms Cheng signalling an ambition for a similar breakthrough in today’s strained cross-strait relations?

Ms Cheng left Taipei for China on April 7 as a weak opposition leader. She returned from the high-stakes tour with her political standing visibly elevated – if not yet a credible presidential contender. 

The question now is whether Taiwanese voters will embrace her vision of peace or recoil from it. 

Before the trip, Ms Cheng’s standing was shaky. A poll released in late March showed her approval rating had sunk to just 23.9 per cent, with 54.5 per cent of the respondents expressing distrust – figures that lagged behind even her party’s already weak showing.

Having narrowly won the chairmanship in October 2025, she lacked a mandate from the party’s broader base. Senior figures such as former KMT chairman Eric Chu openly questioned whether she had the political weight to unite the opposition, let alone mount a credible bid for the presidency in 2028.

The China visit has helped shore up her standing within the party, at least for now.

Her meeting with Mr Xi, in his capacity as general secretary of the Communist Party of China – the first KMT-CPC leaders’ meeting in a decade – positions her as a rare Taiwanese figure able to open a channel that Beijing is willing to use. 

Beijing has refused to communicate with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) after it came to power in 2016, and has shown little interest in engaging sitting KMT leaders since then.

Ms Cheng has moved quickly to frame that access as political capital – casting herself as a leader capable of lowering tensions across the Taiwan Strait should she come to power.

She told reporters that Mr Xi had said “anything can be discussed” if both sides are willing to communicate and find common ground. State news agency Xinhua also reported that Mr Xi told her differences can be resolved with proper communication.

Her pitch goes beyond peace to being about prosperity. She said that smoother ties with Beijing could translate into more predictable conditions for Taiwanese businesses operating on the mainland – a politically influential constituency. 

Ms Cheng’s “journey of peace” may resonate more in the current geopolitical climate. One month into the Iran crisis, the United States is still struggling to force Tehran to lift the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. For some in Taiwan, this raises uncomfortable questions about how far – and how effectively – Washington would act in a Taiwan Strait contingency.

For voters less confident in US security guarantees, Ms Cheng’s argument that engagement with Beijing reduces the risk of conflict may carry weight. If deterrence looks less certain, reconciliation can start to look pragmatic.

With plans to visit Washington next, she is seeking to convert that access into relevance – turning closeness to Beijing into diplomatic capital.

By saying she would meet President Lai Ching-te to discuss her China visit, she implicitly placed herself as a political peer of Taiwan’s sitting leader.

Dissent within the KMT has largely quietened. She now looks less like an accidental party chief and more like a political contender for the island’s highest office.

Taiwan’s next round of local elections, expected in late 2026, will serve as an early gauge of whether the KMT can convert the momentum from Ms Cheng’s trip into votes. 

The bigger prize is the 2028 presidential election. Here, Ms Cheng has already begun to sketch her intent. 

During her meeting with Mr Xi, she said she looked forward to welcoming him to Taiwan “as host”. When pressed, she clarified that she meant in her capacity as KMT chair should the party return to power. But the phrasing suggested she could be imagining herself in office.

It is not hard to see why Beijing might be receptive. A KMT leader who advocates engagement offers an alternative to dealing with a DPP government that Beijing distrusts and often confronts rhetorically. If such a leader were to win power in Taiwan, it could ease tensions and reduce reliance on coercive pressures – a far less risky path than military escalation.

There is also a wider strategic dimension. A successful visit allows Beijing to demonstrate to Washington that cross-strait relations need not be defined by confrontation.

US President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit China in May. Images of Mr Xi shaking hands with a Taiwanese leader in April could put to rest narratives circling within Washington of imminent conflict.

Yet the very moves that have elevated Ms Cheng’s political standing also expose her to backlash. 

Her political gamble of pushing further than previous KMT leaders in signalling goodwill towards Beijing, such as by visiting a communist revolutionary site long avoided by KMT leaders for fear of electoral fallout, appeared to have nudged Beijing into deciding to engage with her with this visit. 

But for many Taiwanese, proximity to Beijing is not reassurance but cause for concern. Her opponents now have more ammunition to portray her as overly accommodating to Beijing at the expense of Taiwan’s interests.

That tension – between engagement and suspicion – is likely to define Taiwan’s political debate in the years ahead. 

If the lunch banquet Mr Xi hosted her to evoked the symbolism of past diplomatic breakthroughs, the question now is whether Taiwanese voters will read it the same way. 

There is a saying: If you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Ms Cheng has secured a seat at the table in Beijing. In Taiwan, voters will decide whether she has earned one at home.