Taiwan opposition leader to make 'peace' visit to China, first in 10 years

Maybe the opposition is hoping the CCP interferes to help them take power?

The KMT is in chronic death. The only thing they can do is to wish China take Taiwan and appoint them as ruling party of Taiwan. KMT and CCP have different origin, but they become political power together when Soviet support Sun build his own army in Guangzhou. Many early CCP members are also KMT member, actually we can say CCP is left wing part of early KMT. For example, Mao Zedong is member of the Politburo of the KMT in 1920s. KMT might hope they get similar treatment after China take Taiwan. It is not the most ideal situation for them, but whatever they have no hope to win the election. The DPP is also not known for being tolerant to opposition

Seems KMT makes this mistake every decade or so... Lol

KMT are still quite competitive at the local level. There are 13 incumbent KMT mayors/magistrates compared to 5 for DPP.

Nah many people are tired of dpp policy of always provoking China for no reason. Most Taiwanese understand that independence is impossible but maybe have peaceful relationship is the best solution. The current president has pretty much radicalized the politically left voters to attack anyone who doesn’t vote dpp. Saying stuff like “if u don’t vote for dpp then ur pretty much selling ur country.” Lai is on track to be the first president to not get re elected for second term with the current ratings.

Yes. Opposition leader means the leader of the opposition party in Taiwan, which in Taiwan’s case is the party that wants to rejoin the PROC.

I don’t know her official position but technically the KMT maintains that the mainland and Taiwan are already both ROC. So they don’t support “independence” because they maintain they “already are” independent. But they don’t support “unification” per se (she might) with the PRC either. Basically they want nothing to change Basically the political strategy version of sticking my head in the sand and going “la la la nothing going on here nothing wrong everything is great”

I think it's not that. They'd prefer independence, but Trump hasn't been, shall we say, been good to their allies as of late.

Kind of? China and Taiwan has close but slightly complicated history, that still shapes political discourse today in Taiwan and between Taiwan and China. For a brief basic history rundown, Taiwan originally was inhabited by aboriginals, so first nations people. Then the Netherlands colonized it for a bit, but got kicked out or left, one of the two. Some people from China went and settled there, and eventually Taiwan came under the Qing Dynasty's rule. During the first Sino-Japanese war Taiwan was given to Japan as a part of an agreement after China lost. During the early 1900s the Qing dynasty which then ruled China was overthrown by Sun Yat-sen and his political party, the KMT, leading to the founding of a Democratic China going by the name of the Republic of China (ROC). China then fights the Japanese invasion during WW2, while Mao and Chiang Kai-Shek, both students of Sun Yat-sen, also fought each other's groups. When WW2 ended, Japan returned Taiwan to China after colonizing it for 50 years. At the time China was in a Civil War while still recovering from WW2, with Chiang's KMT fighting against Mao's Communist party. The KMT loses this battle and escapes to Taiwan, with Taiwan becoming the home of the Republic of China, and Mao's CCP taking China and naming it the People's Republic of China (PRC). Now a brief discussion on Taiwan's history following the arrival of KMT in Taiwan. The KMT arrives in Taiwan and brings with them a population of Chinese people who were either close to KMT or didn't want to live under CCP rule, as well as riches and money. At the time the people already in Taiwan had somewhat neutral to mixed feelings about this arrival. For one, the Japanese supposedly treated some Taiwanese people well, and some families who suckered up or became close to the Japanese during colonization received benefits. Some might say they were traitors to Chinese people, some might say they were just trying to survive. Whatever the case, there is a group in Taiwan who now harbored the feeling of Japan wasn't so bad, KMT might not be so good. An earlier incident, supposedly a miscommunication, between people already living on Taiwan and a group of soldiers from China sent to Taiwan to oversee the reunification led to a violent uprising known as the 228 incident. This led to some pretty strong negative feelings developing between people already in Taiwan before KMT's eventual retreat to Taiwan, and the people who arrived with the KMT during said retreat. This divide is still felt today, and even though Taiwanese people may all look like Chinese people or look partially Chinese, there are actually two groups of people, the benshengren (people from in the province) and the waishengren (people from outside the province). Benshengren generally are people who lived in Taiwan before Japan left, and Waishengren generally refer to the people who arrived with KMT. For the exact details I don't know, since my knowledge is anecdotal based on my father's stories, speaking as a Taiwanese-Canadian immigrant with ancestral roots in China, but i do know the 228 incident and period known as white terror is the main cause of grief between KMT and the Taiwanese people. Despite the martial law and dislike toward Chiang, his son did lead Taiwan to prosperous change, even making Taiwan part of Asian's four dragons during the 1980s. Some student uprisings and political activity would eventually lead to Taiwan allowing more democratic changes, leading to the forming of the DPP (democratic progressive party) which came into power during the year 2000. Now there's actually a bit of drama to the power change toward DPP, as the man named Lee Teng-hui, who came to power as the head of the KMT after the passing of Chiang's son, then ruler of KMT, was seen as the person who allowed opposition leader to form, and took stances against KMT's ideas. Essentially, Lee Teng-hui can be seen as a traitor to the KMT, the party which he became the leader of. Sorry I kind of rambled. To summarize, Taiwan kind of has a complicated history with China. They were originally part of it, but came under colonization by Japan, then got returned to China, then became the Base of Operations for the KMT who has been driven from their home in China by the CCP. However, some of the benshengrens didn't necessarily like the change from Japan rule to KMT rule (even though Japan is technically the outside group that wrestled them away from the motherland, in a sense), and 228 incident and White Terror only makes the divide worse between benshengren and KMT and waishengren. KMT in the past probably also wanted to reunify with China under better conditions with more say in the matter, as in making China more democratic instead of just being absorbed by CCP, but that might not be possible anymore with the CCP so powerful today. Edit: some grammar and spelling

I live in Taiwan I can tell u dpp’s rating currently is at an all time low( Lai might become the first president to not get re elected). The current president has taken a page out of trumps handbook and radicalized the politically left voters and attacking people on the street who had a different political view than them. Calling them traitors or trying to sellout Taiwan and buying out independent media outlets to use to brainwash people into thinking the opposition wants to sellout Taiwan. Let me telll u dpp has been the ruling party for 10 years and won’t dare to declare independence. There’s many other problems like corruption that many western people don’t know. People are just tired of the current ruling party’s political stance of not engaging in peaceful talks with China at all and so we are forced to make deals with us which trump knows and is trying to scam every bit of dollar out of Taiwan.

An interesting perspective on understanding this is using the theoretical situation where if the US civil war ended with confederate forces retreating to an island in the Bahamas.

50/50 what? If your friend is saying 50 percent of Taiwanese people are okay with being part of the PRC, then he is on drugs. Lol

This is the opposition party who has been losing elections in large part due to their ties to China. This is basically not news, nobody is in shambles except people who don't know anything about Taiwan.

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this has to be the stupidest comment i've read today

> It seems like a very desperate move by Taiwan. By Taiwan? You understand she is just the chairperson of the opposition party... right? She is not an elected official.

Cheng doesn’t represent Taiwan.

Trump is doing a lot of dumb shit, but in this case it's a China leaning party going to China. Opposition leader means opposition to the current Taiwanese government.

And currently the US is better how???

I’ve always assumed that Listnook will randomly give them out to give create the illusion that they are a normal thing that people give out.

Why is this a shitty world event?

Whose the paper tiger in this perspective ?

The first time or second time two very different outcomes