Former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou planning to visit mainland China
- Ex-leader will be accompanied by 20 students who will ‘seek out their roots’ in bid to boost cross-strait relations at a time of heightened tensions
- It is not known whether Ma’s trip will include a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping
01:52
Ma Ying-jeou to become first former Taiwanese leader to visit mainland China since 1949
On Monday, Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office welcomed Ma’s visit, which will see him visiting the southern province of Guangdong, Shaanxi in the northwest and Beijing.
Chen Binhua, a spokesman for the office, said Ma will be leading a delegation of young people who will “seek out their roots” and take part in “exchange activities”.
Ma’s office said he would be accompanied by 20 university students who will meet their counterparts from two leading mainland universities – Peking University and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou – during the visit.
During the visit to Shaanxi, a traditional heartland of Chinese civilisation, the group will attend a Ching Ming, or Tomb Sweeping, ceremony to honour the Yellow Emperor – a legendary figure who is seen as the common ancestor of all Chinese people.
Chen said he hoped Ma’s visit would help promote “exchanges in various areas between young people from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait,” the “peaceful development of cross-strait relations” and the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.
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“The mainland visit by the students will have a positive impact on cross-strait relations. It will also allow the mainland’s public to witness the stamina of Taiwanese students,” Ma’s office said in a statement.
In March last year, Ma became the first former Taiwanese leader to visit the mainland since the defeated Nationalist, or Kuomintang, forces fled to the island at the end of the civil war in 1949.
Ma’s office said the exchange visits had helped to increase understanding between young people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
“The more they interact, the more they can understand each other and build friendship,” it said. “With deeper friendship, the chances of conflict would become lower.”
It his not known whether Ma’s visit will include a meeting with Xi, whom he met as president in Singapore in 2015.
When asked who Ma would meet during his visit to the mainland, Hsiao Hsu-tsen, director of Ma’s foundation, said they would be “at our hosts’ disposal”.
Ma’s visit will take place amid heightened cross-strait tensions. Relations have soured under Ma’s successor as president, Tsai Ing-wen from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, and Beijing has been deeply critical of William Lai Ching-te, who won January’s presidential election.
Hostility further spiked after the death last month of two mainland fishermen after their boat capsized following a chase with Taiwanese coastguards near the island of Quemoy, also known as Kinmen.
Beijing accused the Taiwanese coastguards of using “violent and dangerous methods” in their pursuit, although Taipei said they had merely been enforcing the law by asking the fishermen to stop for inspection.
02:22
Former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou says massacre history holds lessons for both sides of strait
Last week the head of the United States Indo-Pacific Command,Admiral John Aquilino, told a Congressional committee that all signs suggested Beijing would be capable of attacking Taiwan by 2027.
Like most countries, the US does not officially recognise Taiwan as independent but it is opposed to a forcible change in the status quo and is committed to helping the island defend itself.
