NIn a statement to the press, the executive director of the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, Hsiao Hsu-tsen, said that the former president of the Kuomintang Party (KMT), now in opposition, will accompany a group of students on a trip to China between 01 and 11 April, on his second trip to the continent since leaving office.
Ma’s itinerary includes activities in Beijing and the provinces of Guangzhou (south) and Shaanxi (northwest), Hsiao said, clarifying that the former Taiwanese leader’s possible meetings with political figures in China will depend on the wishes of the hosts.
The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council [Executivo] of China “welcomed” Ma’s visit.
Cabinet spokesperson Chen Binhua expressed “hope that compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait will promote China’s rich cultural heritage”, describing the trip as “an opportunity” to “strengthen mutual understanding and spiritual connection between young people on both sides of the strait” and “contribute to the peaceful development of relations”.
Chen said that the delegation led by Ma will participate in All Souls’ Day (Qingming, in Mandarin), in which the Chinese pay tribute to deceased loved ones, in a ceremony in honor of the Yellow Emperor, considered one of the pioneers of Chinese civilization.
Ma, who became the first former Taiwanese leader to visit the People’s Republic of China in March last year, called for greater exchanges between Chinese and Taiwanese students during his previous visit, as they “share the same culture and ethnic identity.”
China and Taiwan experienced a period of rapprochement during Ma Ying-jeou’s term, which culminated in a historic meeting in Singapore with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of 2015, the first in more than 60 years of the island’s unilateral separation. .
The visit by the former Taiwanese leader will take place just a month and a half before the inauguration of the island’s elected president and current vice-president, William Lai, considered “an independenceist” in the eyes of Beijing.
Wu Su-yao, general secretary of the Democratic Progressive Party’s legislative group, currently in power on the island, said the KMT always chooses to visit China at “sensitive and critical times” and called on Ma not to convey “wrong messages” during possible meetings with Chinese authorities.
“We must continue to remind Ma to be careful who he meets and what he says when visiting China at such a sensitive time,” he said, according to Taiwan’s state news agency CNA.
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