Former Taiwan President Ma will visit China for the second time

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou will make his second visit to China next month, leading a group of students on an 11-day trip to visit places including Beijing, his office said on Monday, time released According to tensions in the Taiwan Strait.

Ma, who was president from 2008 to 2016, last year became the first former Taiwanese leader to visit China. The defeated government of the Republic of China fled to Taiwan after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949, so no serving Taiwanese leader has visited China.

China considers democratically ruled Taiwan its own territory, and has increased military and political pressure to assert those claims.

In addition to Beijing, Ma will also visit the southern province of Guangdong and the northwestern province of Shaanxi, visiting historical sites, visiting companies and visiting the elite Peking University in Beijing and Sun Yat-sen in Guangzhou, his office said in a statement. Will lead student exchanges at the university. statement.

Asked by reporters who Ma would meet there, Hsiao Hsu-tsen, director of the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, said he would be “at the disposal of our host”.

Ma met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore in late 2015, shortly before current Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen won the election.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which referred to him as “Mr. Ma Ying-jeou” rather than the former president because neither the Chinese nor the Taiwanese governments recognize each other, said it had welcomed his visit. welcomed.

Ma remains a senior member of Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang (KMT), which lost its third consecutive presidential election in January.

The KMT advocates close relations and dialogue with China, but strongly denies being pro-Beijing.

Tsai and her ruling Democratic Progressive Party have repeatedly offered talks with China but have been rejected, as Beijing views them as dangerous separatists.

Tsai says only the people of Taiwan can decide their future. His government strongly objects to China’s sovereignty claims.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry)

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