Taiwan’s Kuomintang chairman Eric Chu to meet Xi Jinping in Beijing
Chu will be third KMT chairman to visit the mainland since 1949
Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT) chairman Eric Chu will meet Xi Jinping in his capacity as Communist Party general secretary in Beijing on May 4, the island’s Central News Agency reports.
Chu will travel to Beijing to meet Xi the day after he participates in a forum between the two parties in Shanghai, the CNA reported citing KMT sources.
This will be the first visit to the mainland by a KMT chief since 2008.
The Cross-Strait Economic, Trade and Culture Forum is an important platform for exchanges between the two parties that was launched in 2006.
The forum was originally scheduled last October, but was postponed following massive student-led protests against Taipei’s handling of cross-strait trade deals. Local elections in the following month saw a landslide defeat for the KMT, resulting with the resignation of Ma Ying-jeou as party chairman.
Chu, who succeeded Ma as KMT chairman in January, is considered the strongest rival of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party chairman Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan’s next presidential election, to be held in January. But after the DPP officially nominated Tsai as its candidate, Chu stated clearly last weekend that he would contest the election.