KMT’s Cheng Li-wun in China: The new, the old, and the risky

Cheng Li-wun’s high-profile visit to China highlights deepening divisions within the KMT while underscoring Beijing’s evolving strategy of pairing political outreach with economic incentives. The trip also draws attention to Taiwan’s energy security, which may play a larger role in the upcoming local elections.

Key takeaways:

Kuomintang (KMT) leader Cheng Li-wun has just returned from a six-day trip to China, during which she met Chinese President Xi Jinping. Several media outlets, especially in the West, have highlighted the visit’s historical nature, noting that Cheng is the first sitting KMT chair to meet Xi since Hung Hsiu-chu in 2016. This interpretation has been challenged by several observers in Taiwan, who point to the frequency of KMT visits to China and emphasize the greater significance of a 2015 meeting between Xi and Ma Ying-jeou, who was not only the KMT chair but also Taiwan’s president at the time.

Both sets of commentaries are valid, yet both pay greater attention to elite rhetoric and symbolism than to substantive outcomes and broader context. In this context, the focus has largely been on Taiwan’s ongoing defense budget standoff, with less attention to energy security and Beijing’s outreach to Taipei in this domain. This is a notable omission, especially for a resource-scarce island that relies on imports for approximately 97% of its energy needs, with transit through the Strait of Hormuz disrupted.

Old wine in a new bottle?

 Cheng has been a controversial figure. A former DPP member and Wild Lily activist (one of Taiwan’s major pro-democracy movements), she had pivoted towards the KMT by 2005. She then rose from obscurity during the party chair election in October 2025, when she defeated more moderate candidates, namely former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin and current Taichung mayor Lu Shiow-yen, the latter of whom is considered one of the frontrunners for the KMT’s 2028 presidential nomination.

Cheng won as a “deep-Blue” candidate who made (and continues to make) controversial statements conflating Chinese and Taiwanese identity. This is a minority position within Taiwanese society, where the percentage of the population identifying as Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese has decreased considerably over the years, currently standing at around 2.5% and 31%, respectively, compared to a clear majority of 62% identifying as Taiwanese only.

The KMT chair election was also marred by accusations of Chinese interference, with a fellow deep-Blue figure, Jaw Shaw-kong, a co-founder of the pro-unification KMT splinter New Party, claiming that Cheng was a China-backed candidate. During her so-far brief tenure, Cheng has attracted several other controversies. These include remarks that parrot Kremlin talking points, blaming NATO’s eastward expansion (rather than Russian revisionism) for the war in Ukraine, and participation in a ceremony commemorating a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spy who infiltrated KMT ranks during its authoritarian period. All of this has prompted comparisons to former KMT chair Hung, whose controversial pro-Beijing rhetoric and actions led the party to replace her (with Eric Chu) as their presidential candidate during the 2016 presidential election.

Cheng’s meeting with Xi attracted further criticism. Xi made his usual comments about Taiwanese “independence forces” and US interference as the primary drivers of tensions in the Taiwan Strait, positions increasingly echoed by Cheng, who has also accused the DPP of abolishing formal institutional ties with the CCP, even though the reverse is true. This stands in stark contrast to KMT moderates, including former chair Eric Chu, who tend to pursue a more balanced approach to relations with the US and China.

At the same time, Cheng has at times advocated a policy of non-alignment based on the 1992 Consensus, which she appears to frame as a form of strategic ambiguity, akin to the US’s long-standing approach toward Taiwan, as institutionalized in the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).

Indeed, Cheng’s leadership has been marked by increasing tensions within an already divided party. After what the KMT interpreted as a major victory and signal of public support during the Great Recall campaign, the party now faces renewed concerns about its electoral prospects ahead of the upcoming nine-in-one local elections in November 2026.

Cheng’s remarks about the 1992 Consensus attracted the greatest backlash. Whereas previous KMT leaders had largely avoided references to the controversial formula, Cheng explicitly linked the “shared political foundation” based on the 1992 Consensus to opposition to Taiwan’s independence.

Several analysts see this as an attempt to redefine the consensus’s meaning from “One China, respective interpretations” to something closer to “One China, same interpretation”, a position previously promoted by former KMT chair Hung that has contributed to Beijing blurring the distinction between its own interpretation of the consensus, on one hand, and the “One-China Principle” and the “One Country, Two Systems” frameworks, on the other. Since the Hong Kong crisis, the latter framework has become particularly unacceptable to most Taiwanese, which is why even “deep-Blue” KMT figures like Han Kuo-yu have sought to distance themselves from it.

While Cheng’s rhetoric is arguably aimed more at a domestic audience, reinforcing the KMT’s self-depiction as a party of peace capable of constructive engagement with the mainland, her reinterpretation of the 1992 Consensus, alongside the adoption of Xi’s rhetoric about the “national rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and a “community of common destiny”, provides Beijing with significant leverage in advancing its claims over Taiwan.

Risky intentions: Ten incentives and energy security

The DPP has repudiated Cheng’s remarks on the consensus, with Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president, referencing the TRA and the Six Assurances while emphasizing the importance of negotiating with China from a “position of strength” rather than subservience. In addition, the DPP officials have consistently highlighted the increasing number of Chinese military activities in Taiwan’s vicinity, including during Cheng’s visit. This underscores the stark contrast between KMT peace rhetoric and Chinese actions.

Indeed, the visit came as the pan-Blue camp continues to stall the passage of a $40 billion supplementary defense budget proposed by the DPP executive, while also blocking the $11.1 billion US arms sales package, the largest to date. The KMT has instead proposed a smaller defense package of around $11 billion, with purchases restricted to specific weapon systems (excluding, among others, the “T-Dome” anti-missile defense system modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome) and spending tied to formal letters of offer and acceptance from the US.

The visit concluded with ten incentives offered by Chinese leadership to Taiwan, including the resumption of cross-Strait flights, easing tourism restrictions, allowing imports of Taiwanese agri-food products and TV dramas with “correct orientation” and “healthy content,” as well as plans to construct infrastructure connecting Kinmen and Matsu islands to the mainland. These are widely seen as efforts to influence the upcoming elections and reflect a well-established practice in Beijing’s cognitive warfare toolkit.

As part of this, China frequently employs preferential trade and other measures aimed at specific countries, companies, or groups to shape political behavior. Both Tsai and Lai administrations have repeatedly stated their openness to dialogue with Beijing, provided it is conducted on the basis of equality and without political preconditions, with KMT-CCP engagement effectively bypassing official government channels.

One of the most notable examples of such political conditionality has been Beijing’s offer of energy security in exchange for “reunification.” Concerns about Taiwan’s energy supply have been rising both domestically and internationally, with the US-Israel-Iran conflict further exacerbating existing concerns about LNG supply routes in the event of a Taiwan Strait contingency. In 2024, oil accounted for around 35.8% of Taiwan’s energy mix, coal for 31.7%, gas for 23.7%, renewables for 6.2%, and nuclear for 2.3%, with dependence on supplies from Qatar and the US increasing. The former saw the largest year-on-year increase in 2025.

Moreover, Lai’s push for AI development is expected to further increase energy demand, a major concern given that Taiwan’s industrial sector already accounts for more than half of electricity consumption. These pressures have contributed to a shift in the DPP’s long-standing nuclear policy, with Lai announcing plans to restart both the No. 2 Guosheng and No. 3 Maanshan nuclear power plants, while reaffirming the party’s commitments to green energy and maintaining that Taiwan’s electricity supply is secure until 2032. To counter Chinese disinformation about the impact of the Strait of Hormuz crisis on Taiwan, Taiwan’s Energy Administration has also repeatedly claimed that LNG, oil, and coal reserves remain above legal thresholds.

Local elections and the way forward

Beijing’s energy offer, along with Cheng’s reported discussions with Xi on cooperation in green and digital transitions, is particularly concerning, as it touches on substantive challenges facing Taiwan’s economy while raising doubts about the effectiveness of the island’s democratically elected government and its energy security plan. CCP-KMT engagement is not new, and the ten incentives are largely consistent with Beijing’s previous efforts to exploit internal divisions, often along party lines, ahead of major elections.

While Cheng is not the first senior KMT figure to visit Beijing, she is the first sitting party chair to do so in a decade, following years of KMT efforts to cultivate a more moderate image. This has, in turn, intensified intra-party polarization, with the more ideologically driven deep-Blue members increasingly at odds with their more moderate, electorally focused counterparts.

As a result, the upcoming local elections will be particularly important, not only in determining the balance of power within the KMT but also because they are more likely to be framed around cross-Strait issues (rather than their usual focus on domestic governance). The KMT has already announced its intention to field joint candidates with the Taiwan People’s Party, another pan-Blue party that has recently faced its own controversies, including the sentencing of its founder, Ko Wen-je, as well as the appointment (and subsequent expulsion) of the first Taiwanese legislator born in mainland China. All in all, the visit highlighted both old and new elements in the KMT’s cross-Strait vocabulary. In terms of substantive outcomes, China’s opportunism regarding Taiwan’s energy (in)security will be a key development to watch in the next few months.