Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou has announced that he will travel to China next week, in what is considered a historic trip in the region, as he will be the first former Taiwanese head of state to visit mainland China since 1949.
“Ma Ying-jeou is coming to pay respects to his ancestors before the celebration of the Qingming festival, or Tomb Sweeping Day. In addition, he will lead a group of Taiwanese exchange students,” spokesman Ma Xiaoguang of the Taiwanese university said Monday. Chinese office, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
According to the spokesperson, paying respects to ancestors at this festival is “a tradition shared by both sides.” He added that “if the communication between the two sides improves, young people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait will be able to create new momentum for the peaceful development of relations.”
China and Taiwan experienced a great moment of rapprochement with the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou, of the KMT, between 2008 and 2016, to the point that he held a historic meeting in Singapore with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the end of 2015. , the first in more than 60 years of unilateral separation from the island.
In 2016, the Democratic Progressive Party won the Taiwanese elections. Since then, tensions between Beijing and Taipei have been increasing and intensified last summer after the visit to the island of the then president of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, strongly protested by the Chinese authorities.
In addition, China is close to wresting from Taiwan one of its few remaining diplomatic allies, since on the 14th, Honduran President Xiomara Castro gave instructions for it to begin establishing diplomatic relations with China.
The rupture of relations with Taiwan by Honduras would reduce to 13 the number of countries with which Taipei maintains official diplomatic relations and would make the Central American nation the ninth country – and the fifth Latin American country – that since 2016 has cut with the island to establish ties with Chinese.
In addition to Honduras, the countries with which Taiwan maintains diplomatic relations are Guatemala, Vatican City, Haiti, Paraguay, Eswatini, Tuvalu, Nauru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Belize, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.
China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, which it considers a rebel territory since Kuomintang nationalists retreated to the island in 1949 after losing the war against the communist army.
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