HISTORY CASTS a long shadow over relations between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang (KMT), which ruled China until Mao Zedong’s Red Army forced it to flee to Taiwan in 1949.
The two parties remained sworn enemies for decades afterwards as the KMT fortified its island refuge with American weapons.
Only in 1991, as Taiwan democratised, did the KMT formally renounce its goal to retake China by force.
And yet, in one of the stranger ironies of present-day geopolitics, China now sees the KMT—the biggest opposition party in Taiwan’s current parliament—as its best hope of peacefully uniting the island with the mainland.
Hence the hoopla surrounding a planned visit to China by Cheng Li-wun, the new KMT chairwoman, between April 7th and 12th.
Much therefore depends on what Ms Cheng says during her visit to Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing, and especially in her meeting with Mr Xi, which is expected to take place on April 10th.
She may avoid expressing views on unification given the sensitivity of the subject back home.
But if she repeats her frequent assertions that Taiwanese people are Chinese or that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are part of “one China”, mainland authorities are likely to exploit those comments in their propaganda and diplomacy.
