China's Xi meets Taiwan opposition leader in Beijing

China’s President Xi Jinping met Taiwan’s opposition party leader Cheng Li-wun in Beijing on Friday, Chinese state media said.Kuomintang (KMT) chairwoman Cheng is the party’s first leader to visit China in a decade, and has said she hopes to sow the “seeds of peace” during her trip.Her visit has sparked debate in Taiwan with critics accusing her of being too pro-Beijing.China severed high-level contact with Taiwan in 2016 after Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency and rejected Beijing’s claims to the island.Beijing claims Taiwan is its territory and does not rule out using force to take it.China has ramped up military pressure around Taiwan in recent years with near-daily deployments of fighter jets and warships near the island and regular large-scale military drills.Cross-strait relations have worsened particularly since the election of Tsai’s successor, Lai Ching-te, who Beijing considers a separatist.Lai said in a Facebook post on Friday “China’s incessant grey-zone harassment and military threats in and around the Taiwan Strait and the island chain have severely undermined regional peace and stability”.Cheng landed in Shanghai on Tuesday evening, saying shortly after her arrival that “the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are not doomed to war, as the international community has feared”.

The KMT leader also travelled to the eastern city of Nanjing where she visited the mausoleum of revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, one of the few Chinese historical figures revered in both Beijing and Taipei.