When China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and then-President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan shook hands in Singapore back in 2015, they each extolled their meeting — the first top-level talks between the rival governments — as a breakthrough that could pave the way to a durable peace, ending decades of enmity.
But on Wednesday, as the two men met again in Beijing, the prospects for an amicable settlement over Taiwan’s future seemed more distant than ever.
Mr. Ma, who pursued closer engagement with China during his eight years in office, is no longer president of Taiwan. Fewer and fewer Taiwanese people now share his belief that Taiwan must see its future as a part of a greater China.
Since Mr. Ma left office in 2016, Mr. Xi has frozen high-level contacts with Taiwan, sought to isolate it on the global stage and tried to intimidate it with a tightening military presence around the island. Mr. Xi is profoundly suspicious of Taiwan’s current leadership, which has sought to assert the sovereignty of the island democracy.
The meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing was the first time that a Chinese leader has met a former president of Taiwan on Chinese soil. Mr. Xi and Mr. Ma held a handshake for around 15 seconds and smiled for the cameras. They then sat at a long table like two statesman entering negotiations, even though Mr. Ma has long been out of power.
In opening remarks, Mr. Xi praised Mr. Ma as a patriot who had promoted “peaceful development” across the Taiwan Strait, and he pressed Beijing’s position that Taiwan must accept that it is a part of China.
“Compatriots on both sides of the strait are Chinese,” Mr. Xi said. “The difference in systems does not alter the objective fact that the two sides of the strait are of one country and one nation.”
For Beijing, Mr. Xi’s show of amity with Mr. Ma was part of a strategy to set its terms for dealing with Taiwan’s next leader: the president-elect, Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing describes as a dangerous separatist.
In recent months, China has signaled how it could squeeze Mr. Lai’s administration — militarily, economically and diplomatically. It has brushed off Mr. Lai’s offers to talk as insincere.
On the other hand, Beijing has shown that it will court friendlier Taiwanese politicians, like Mr. Ma, who endorse the framework for relations that it demands: that both sides accept that they are part of one China, even if they differ on what that means. Mr. Xi noted that condition — called the “1992 Consensus” because of its year of origin — in his comments to Mr. Ma, and Mr. Ma also reaffirmed it.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees the island’s policy toward China, said that Mr. Xi’s language about the conditions for engagement was an “attempt to blot out our national sovereignty.”
China’s “immediate focus is to push the incoming Lai administration to adopt a more accommodating political stance on cross-strait relations,” said Amanda Hsiao, the senior analyst for China with the Crisis Group, an organization that seeks to defuse wars and crises. “Ma’s visit helps to underscore Beijing’s position that cross-strait dialogue is conditioned on acceptance of the idea that the two sides of the strait belong to ‘one China.’”
Taiwan and China have been at odds since the Communist revolution of 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist troops fled to the island and made it their redoubt. Over time, the Nationalists stopped being Beijing’s archenemy and became its preferred dialogue partner in Taiwan, particularly during Mr. Ma’s time in office. The two sides built economic ties and edged toward talks over their political status and future, culminating in Mr. Ma’s 2015 meeting with Mr. Xi.
But the Nationalists have lost the last three presidential elections to the Democratic Progressive Party, which has cast itself as a defender of Taiwan’s democracy and rejects Beijing’s claim to the island. Since Mr. Lai was elected in January, defeating a colleague of Mr. Ma, China has stepped up its pressure.
In January, it moved to peel away one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies: Nauru, which had been one of the dozen or so states that still maintain formal relations with the island.
In February, Beijing sent coast guard ships to patrol the waters near a Taiwanese-controlled island off mainland China, after two Chinese fishermen died nearby while fleeing a Taiwanese coast guard vessel. China continues to buzz the skies near Taiwan with military planes almost daily, and many analysts expect China’s People’s Liberation Army to stage major exercises before, and especially after, Mr. Lai’s inauguration in May.
Beijing has also tried to use Mr. Ma’s trip to undercut Mr. Lai’s victory in the eyes of the domestic Chinese audience, and in particular the country’s fervent nationalists, said Chien-wen Kou, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei who studies the Chinese Communist Party.
“The chances of restoring official dialogue are not high,” he said. “Inviting Ma Ying-jeou to visit China is also intended to demonstrate that Lai Ching-te, in the Chinese Communist Party’s telling, represents only a minority of public opinion in Taiwan.”
Tensions with Taiwan also influence China’s relations with the United States, the most important backer of Taiwan’s security. In a phone call with President Biden last week, Mr. Xi reiterated that Taiwan was of the utmost importance to Beijing, describing it as “the first red line that must not be stepped over in China-U.S. relations,” according to the official Chinese summary of their call.
“China will not sit back passively in the face of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities and external encouragement and support for them,” Mr. Xi said.
By contrast, Chinese state media have highlighted Mr. Ma’s tour to make the case that Beijing has plenty of friends in Taiwan. The reports on Mr. Ma’s 11-day trip to China, with a delegation of Taiwanese students, have covered stops at heritage sites, with the students touring the Forbidden City and taking selfies on the Great Wall.
Mr. Ma’s itinerary is centered on one theme: that Taiwan is part of a greater Chinese nation, united by culture and history, if not politics. In northwest China, Mr. Ma paid his respects at a memorial to the Yellow Emperor, the fabled ancestor of the Han people, the dominant ethnic group in China and Taiwan.
Especially in retirement, Mr. Ma has become a vocal proponent of the view that Taiwan is historically and culturally part of China, and should accept that closer ties with the mainland are part of its destiny.
“If war breaks out between the two sides of the strait, that would put an unbearable burden on the Chinese nation,” Mr. Ma said to Mr. Xi. “The Chinese people on both sides of the Strait absolutely have the wisdom to peacefully handle the various disputes and avoid going toward conflict.”
Mr. Ma said Taiwan should accept the notion that the two sides are part of “one China.”
That view, however, does not reflect broader Taiwanese sentiment.
Most Taiwanese people reject the idea of unification with China, and accept their island democracy’s ambiguous status quo of being self-ruled but not recognized as an independent country by most governments.
People in Taiwan increasingly describe themselves as exclusively Taiwanese, instead of Chinese. Even within Mr. Ma’s Nationalist Party, many politicians, including its recent presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, have been notably more wary of China.
Claire Fu contributed reporting from Seoul.
