Taiwan’s Defense Consensus Is Fracturing — And Beijing Knows It

Taiwan’s legislature is locked in a fierce fight over a special defense budget to acquire U.S. weapons systems — and the opposition party that’s blocking it just sent its leader to shake hands with Xi Jinping in Beijing. The collision of these two events has fractured what remained of Taiwan’s cross-strait defense consensus, and Beijing is watching closely.

Opposition leader Cheng Li-wun met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, becoming the highest-ranking Taiwanese leader to sit down with Xi since 2015, when then-President Ma Ying-jeou met the Chinese leader in Singapore. The meeting immediately widened an already deep fault line in Taiwanese politics over how to deal with Beijing’s increasingly assertive posture across the Taiwan Strait.

Cheng, chairperson of the Kuomintang (KMT), called for the strait to become a symbol of peace safeguarded by people on both sides. She said she hoped to serve as a bridge for peace between Taiwan and China. Xi responded with language designed to reinforce shared ethnic identity, according to reports.

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), condemned the meeting, warning about the risks of engaging with authoritarian regimes.

The Defense Budget Fight

The meeting lands in the middle of a fierce legislative battle over Taiwan’s defense posture. The DPP government has been trying to push through a special defense budget to acquire U.S. weapons systems, but the opposition-dominated legislature has blocked it. The KMT has proposed a smaller alternative focused on specific military items already approved for sale by the U.S.

The gap between the two proposals tells you a lot about the ideological distance between the two parties. The DPP views the budget as essential preparation against a Chinese military that has conducted multiple rounds of multi-day live-fire military drills in the Taiwan Strait in recent years, including exercises that observers say resemble rehearsals for a blockade. The KMT views the larger number as wasteful and provocative.

Cheng denied that the budget fight was timed to her visit. But the sequence is hard to ignore: the KMT blocks the defense budget, Cheng flies to Beijing, and she meets Xi. Congressional delegations have urged Taiwan’s parliament to strengthen its defense capabilities.

Defense experts have noted that Cheng’s position does not represent majority opinion. Taiwanese people are clear that the source of military threats is not emanating from the DPP or President Lai, but from Beijing.

A Meeting Designed for Multiple Audiences

The optics of the visit are aimed at more than just cross-strait relations. Xi may meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing in the coming weeks, and several analysts argue that the choreography of Cheng’s visit is partly a message to Washington.

Beijing wants a cordial meeting with Taiwan’s opposition to undermine the argument for US-Taiwan defense cooperation. The idea is to establish a visual narrative of peaceful engagement so that when Trump arrives in Beijing, China can focus on trade deals rather than being pressed on Taiwan Strait tensions. China hopes to show Trump that elements in Taiwan align with Beijing on key policies — an impression that could influence Trump’s position on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, one of the major issues Xi will likely put on the table when the two leaders meet.

For Cheng and the KMT, the calculation is more domestic. Taiwan holds local elections later this year, and Cheng is positioning herself as the political figure capable of maintaining dialogue with Beijing at a moment when the DPP government has none. The DPP has not had formal communication channels with Beijing since Tsai Ing-wen became president and refused to endorse the concept of a single Chinese nation.

Identity Politics and the Shrinking ‘Chinese’ Label

Xi’s rhetoric about shared Chinese identity hits differently in a Taiwan where fewer and fewer people accept that frame. Surveys have shown that a growing majority of Taiwanese identify as “Taiwanese” rather than “Chinese,” a dramatic increase from previous decades. The share identifying as “Chinese” has collapsed over the same period to just a small percentage.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2023 found similar patterns: 67% of respondents identified as primarily Taiwanese, 28% as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and only 3% as primarily Chinese. The same survey found that 66% of Taiwanese consider China’s power and influence a major threat, a view held even by 64% of those who identify as at least partly Chinese.

These numbers create a structural problem for the KMT’s approach. The party’s emphasis on shared Chinese heritage and cultural bonds with the mainland appeals to a shrinking demographic. Cheng has described identifying as Chinese as natural, a statement that places her outside mainstream Taiwanese opinion.

Political scientists have noted that many read Cheng as an opportunist with little principle, a politician that cares about her own position more than anything else, according to analysis. This may be a reason why polls show little confidence in her.

What Beijing Gets Out of This

From Beijing’s perspective, the meeting serves several purposes simultaneously. It creates a channel of communication with a major Taiwanese political party that does not require recognizing the DPP government. It reinforces the narrative that cross-strait peace is achievable if Taiwan simply chooses the right political leadership. And it gives Xi a public relations tool ahead of his potential summit with Trump.

The DPP has characterized the meeting as Beijing exercising control over KMT activities. Taiwan’s government said it would closely monitor Cheng’s trip, which included stops in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing. The DPP accused Cheng of being subservient to Beijing, saying the trip would be controlled by the Communist Party.

Cheng arrived in China earlier in the week and made a stop in Nanjing, a city rich with KMT symbolism. Nanjing served as the capital of China under KMT rule before the Communist Party took power in 1949. After their defeat, KMT forces fled to Taiwan, and the island has been self-governing ever since. The historical resonance of the Nanjing visit was likely deliberate on both sides.

Trump’s Shadow Over the Strait

American policy on Taiwan has become less predictable under Trump’s second term. Trump has publicly suggested that Taiwan should pay the U.S. for defending it against China, generating anxiety in Taipei about the reliability of the security relationship. Xi has urged Trump to be prudent about arms sales to the island.

This uncertainty gives Cheng a wedge argument: if the U.S. commitment is unreliable, then Taiwan needs its own diplomatic relationship with Beijing. Growing skepticism about the U.S. in Taiwan, largely stemming from Trump’s mixed signals on his Taiwan policy and the Middle East conflict, has created an opening for Cheng to present herself as a leader capable of reducing cross-strait tension through engagement.

The logic has a certain appeal. But it collides with two facts that are hard to argue away. China has not renounced the use of force against Taiwan. And the multiple rounds of live-fire drills in recent years, conducted across a strait only 180 kilometers wide, suggest that Beijing’s military planning proceeds regardless of whoever is talking peace in front of cameras.

What the Meeting Changes and What It Doesn’t

Cheng told reporters after the meeting that if the KMT took power, she would invite Xi to visit Taiwan. Taiwan’s next general election is in 2028. Between now and then, the KMT would need to convince a public that overwhelmingly identifies as Taiwanese, views China as a threat, and just elected a DPP president that the path to security runs through Beijing rather than Washington.

The meeting produced warm language but no concrete agreements. No new communication mechanisms were announced. No military confidence-building measures were discussed publicly. The Taiwan Strait remains one of the most heavily militarized stretches of water on Earth, and nothing said in Beijing changed that.

Cheng framed the visit as a peace mission, expressing hope that the Taiwan Strait would not become a flashpoint for conflict or a chessboard for external powers through cooperation between the two parties.

The word “hope” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Beijing has not offered anything beyond words. And in Taipei, the DPP controls the presidency while the KMT controls the legislature, which means the defense budget fight will continue, Cheng will claim credit for dialogue, Lai will warn about sovereignty, and the Chinese military will keep drilling.

The question is whether voters buy the peace narrative when the polling data so clearly shows they see China as a threat. The answer to that question will be written not in Beijing, but in ballot boxes across Taiwan in the months and years ahead.

Photo by Jimmy Liao on Pexels

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