Chinese President Xi Jinping would be pleased if his meeting Saturday with Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, swayed the island’s coming elections in favor of Mr. Ma’s Nationalist Party. But Xi certainly isn’t counting on that outcome. He knows that Ma is a deeply unpopular, lame duck leader and that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) attempt to influence Taiwan’s elections in 1996 backfired. He’s also aware that public sentiment in Taiwan does not favor Beijing’s cause. Chinese officials track polls showing that most Taiwanese no longer identify as Chinese and have scant desire to join the People’s Republic.
Against this background, it is likely that Xi orchestrated the summit more out of concern for his domestic standing than to improve the dwindling prospects of Taiwan’s Nationalist Party.
Since becoming president in 2013, Xi has used every tool at his disposal to convince Communist Party members and ordinary Chinese that the country’s prosperity and global influence depend on his wise, uncorrupted, and expansive exercise of authority. Having built an image as the nation’s savior, he cannot appear as a passive observer of developments in Taiwan that make the prospect of reunification with the mainland ever more remote.
The Saturday meeting in Singapore will be a performance of power designed to show Chinese on the mainland and around the world that Xi Jinping is a bold, benign leader who takes historic steps. The meeting may have little impact on Taiwan’s elections in January–which the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, is widely expected to win–but it will allow Xi to shape expectations for future cross-strait dialogue and to show that he is committed to fulfilling the sacred mission of unifying the motherland, a goal that he said in 2013 “cannot be passed on from generation to generation.”
Coming so late in the tenure of President Ma, who is due to retire next year, the meeting will do little to burnish Ma’s image. But the timing is good for Xi, who faces a daunting list of domestic and international challenges. China’s economy is weakening; Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has slowed the gears of government; Chinese intellectuals and creative classes are stymied by the CCP’s ideological strictures on universities, media, and culture; ordinary Chinese are angry about pollution and unsafe food and working conditions; and Xi’s aggressive policies in the South China Sea are drawing opposition from the U.S. and China’s neighbors. Not a bad time for an unprecedented, statesmanlike move which few expect to have an immediate impact.
Xi Jinping risks nearly nothing and only improves his stature by meeting with Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore. The risk—if there is any in what may prove to be a dramatic but inconsequential summit—will be borne by Taiwanese who want to preserve their de facto independence.
This article was originally published on WSJ
