“External interference” will not prevent reunification between China and Taiwan. This is what President Xi Jinping said when meeting former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou in the Great Hall of the People, according to official media. For the first time since 1949, the year of the end of the civil war, a former leader of the rebel province and refuge of Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists is hosted in Beijing with all the honors and attention. But he led Taiwan from 2008 to 2016 and had already met Xi in 2015 in Singapore in their historic two-minute meeting.
"Differences in systems cannot change the objective fact that we belong to one nation and one people," Xi told Ma, according to images released of the meeting by TVBS, the Taiwanese network authorized to cover the event. "External interference cannot stop the historic cause of our reunion," the Chinese president added. Xi and Ma greeted each other with a long and warm handshake.
Ma, who met Xi in the Great Hall of the People, has been visiting China since April 1 on what he described as a "peace trip" to calm tensions with Beijing, which claims Taiwan as an "inalienable" part of its territory to be reunited even by force if necessary, leading a delegation of 20 students from the island in a rich program that included meetings at technology companies, universities and historical sites across the country. The former leader succumbed to tears on four occasions during the visit, the last of which on Monday during the excursion to the Great Wall while he sang the
patriotic song ('the ballad of the Great Wall') with the students of his delegation. An episode that went viral on social media where the "peace tour" became the "crying tour". Before his departure, the former president of Taipei had made it clear that the trip was aimed at promoting exchanges between young generations and "to reduce the current hostilities and accumulate goodwill" with Beijing. But he was at the institutional summit
of Taiwan for two terms, between 2008 and 2016, representing the Kuomintang (KMT), the party historically closest to and in dialogue with Beijing.
Cross-Strait relations have collapsed since the 2016 election of Tsai Ing-wen as president of the island, due to her positions against Beijing's claims on the belief that Taiwan's autonomy is a fact. The victory of his deputy, William Lai, in the January 13 presidential elections has the potential to further worsen relations between Taipei and Beijing. The latter, in fact, is a "troublemaker" and a "dangerous separatist" for the communist leadership.