Taiwan's former president Ma Ying-jeou was received by China's head of state Xi Jinping. It was the first meeting between a sitting Taiwanese president and his Chinese counterpart.
The friendly words are in stark contrast to China's ongoing threatening gestures towards Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be part of its own territory. It is probably no coincidence that the meeting between Xi and Ma took place on April 10th: on this date in 1979, the “Taiwan Relations Act” came into force. Ma's trip to China is highly controversial in Taiwan. Unlike supporters of the ruling DPP and the vast majority of younger Taiwanese, he thinks little of the idea of a Taiwanese identity that is separate from mainland China. He is following in the tradition of his KMT, whose members fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war against the Communist Party and which continued to emphasize for decades that it was actually the legitimate government of China. The Taiwanese Mainland China Affairs Authority criticized Ma for not emphasizing that the people of Taiwan wanted to hold on to their sovereignty and free institutions.