Kuomintang (KMT) chair Cheng Li-wun returned to Taiwan on June 16, ending a two-week trip to the United States. The trip comes shortly on the heels of Cheng’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in April, which significantly boosted Cheng’s international profile. Her meeting with Xi took place a month before U.S. President Donald Trump’s own summit with the Chinese leader.
Although Cheng stated ahead of time that she hoped to meet with Trump, this ultimately did not occur. Before traveling to Washington as part of her trip, Cheng aimed to flatter the U.S. president, stating that he could be the “greatest statesman of the 21st century” if he was able to resolve tensions in the Taiwan Strait. President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) also previously sought to flatter Trump by suggesting that he would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize if he was able to convince Xi to renounce the use of force against Taiwan.
Taiwan’s ties with the United States have been questioned after the Trump-Xi summit, particularly after Trump seemed to echo Xi’s language on Taiwan in the wake of the meeting. However, comments by Trump suggesting that he is still weighing arms sales to Taiwan, as well as his affirmation that he opposes Taiwanese independence, also indirectly echo Cheng.
After her meeting with the KMT chair, with Cheng suggested that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and KMT could find common ground on their shared opposition to independence. Trump’s present holding up of arms sales to Taiwan also echoes Cheng’s current claim that the KMT will only approve further defense spending for Taiwan if the United States provides notification of arms sales.
Cheng’s trip to Washington let her meet with policymakers, politicians, and think-tankers, including House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast, and Defense Priorities’ Asia Program director Lyle Goldstein.
Much media attention in Taiwan focused on a suddenly canceled meeting between Cheng and the National Security Council. Before the meeting was to have taken place, the venue had already been downgraded from the White House to the Washington offices of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the United States’ representative office in Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic relations. In the end, Cheng met with lower-level U.S. government officials than Taichung mayor Lu Shiow-yen did during her own trip to the United States in March.
Cheng also did not meet with AIT’s Washington director, Ingrid D. Larson, who met with Lu.
Speculation is that this may be reprisal over a previous spat between the KMT leadership and the AIT. Amid calls by the United States for Taiwan to pass defense spending, which was blocked by the KMT in the legislature, Cheng’s deputy chair, Hsiao Hsu-tsen, hit out at AIT director Raymond Greene for his advocacy for defense spending. Hsiao called Greene no higher than a section chief.
Unsurprisingly, Cheng was questioned over the KMT’s defense policy during her trip. The KMT and its partner, the Taiwan People’s Party, have repeatedly blocked and cut defense spending, most recently passing a supplemental budget stripped of nearly all funding for indigenous defense programs, most notably drone research and development. Cheng claimed that the KMT was not opposed to defense for Taiwan, including drone development, but that the defense bill contained provisions put in by the DPP unacceptable to Taiwan. She said that her trip was meant to clear up misunderstandings. Cheng also framed her political stances as in the interests of regional peace, stating that she hoped to abolish the First Island Chain to instead create a “Chain of Peace and Prosperity.”
To this end, Cheng stated that she hoped to establish a direct line of communication between the KMT and Washington – though this opens Cheng up to allegations that, just as with her trip in April to meet with Xi, she is seeking to route around Taiwan’s democratically elected institutions to conduct diplomacy. With her call to meet with Trump, there were fears in Taiwan that Cheng was seeking to appeal to isolationist elements of the Trump administration, who might welcome the KMT’s return to power if it meant that Taiwan went away as a geopolitical risk factor.
Still, Cheng’s U.S. trip stirred up more controversy for events that took place during other stops. Apart from visiting Washington, D.C., Cheng also made stops in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
During her other stops, Cheng was reported by Taiwanese media to have appeared with figures under scrutiny by the United States for links to the CCP’s United Front work, such as Chen Heng, the chair of the China Fujian Association. Chen was reportedly investigated by the FBI and other U.S. national security agencies for acting as an unregistered foreign agent and at the direction of Chinese intelligence. Chen was among the organizers of counter-protests in New York against stopovers by former President Tsai Ing-wen when she was in office, and he has been linked to individuals who operated an illegal overseas Chinese police station in the Manhattan Chinatown of New York City.
At a banquet in Boston, Cheng sat at the same table as Gary Yu, who has been accused in the past of working for China’s United Front. After the Boston dinner, the KMT stated that Yu had not been invited to the banquet by the political party, but had been invited by overseas Taiwanese expatriates.
Cheng was confronted several times publicly. During an event at Asia Society in New York, Cheng was confronted during a Q-and-A session by a man who identified himself as a pro-democracy Chinese dissident, who warned that Taiwan would share the fate of Hong Kong if it sought rapprochement with China. The man was removed from the event by security.
In Los Angeles, members of the China Democracy Party alleged that they had been choked and removed by force during the Q-and-A of an event after questioning Cheng on why the KMT had sided with the CCP rather than assisting with efforts to democratize China.
After returning to Taiwan, Cheng unusually did not make any public comment on her tour of the United States. Even so, her U.S. trip is probably a sign that Cheng has presidential ambitions. Taiwanese political candidates for both the KMT and DPP regularly travel to the United States to build up their international standing and diplomatic credentials ahead of a presidential run.
The KMT has historically campaigned on the claim that it is the only political party in Taiwan able to communicate with the CCP and, in this way, maintain stable cross-strait relations. But KMT presidential candidates also need to signal to the public that they can uphold relations with the United States – the other major external stakeholder in cross-strait relations apart from China.
