Taiwan’s KMT chair Cheng Li-wun to honour Sun Yat-sen on landmark mainland China trip

Aerial view of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, a site that holds deep symbolic significance for the Kuomintang and cross-strait ties.

Photo: Shutterstock Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of Taiwan’s main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT), will visit Nanjing during her visit to mainland China next week.

According to a KMT press statement issued on Tuesday night, she will pay tribute at the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China – Taiwan’s formal name – and a symbol of the shared past between Taiwan and the mainland.

Cheng will arrive in Shanghai on April 7 and then travel by train to Nanjing, in eastern Jiangsu province, the itinerary shows.

She will visit the mausoleum park the following morning and take the train back to Shanghai in the afternoon.

Cheng, who took office as KMT chair in November, said earlier this week that she would visit mainland China from April 7 to 12 at the invitation of Xi Jinping, leader of the ruling Communist Party.

Her itinerary for the remaining four days remains undisclosed, although she is expected to visit Beijing and meet Xi.

Cheng Li-wun speaks at an event in Taipei last November.

The backdrop shows former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou (left) and Beijing’s Xi Jinping.

Photo: Kyodo At a KMT meeting on Wednesday, Cheng said the party had “an inescapable historical mission, to prove that at critical moments, the two sides of the [Taiwan] Strait can absolutely engage in peaceful dialogue and exchanges, thereby laying the foundation for creating peaceful and stable cross-strait relations, achieving regional stability, and promoting global peace”.

The trip was “of great significance and presented extraordinary challenges”, she was quoted as saying by Taiwan’s China Times.

Cross-strait exchanges would pose no difficulty, she asserted, if parties returned to the 1992 consensus and opposed “Taiwan independence”.

Conflict in the Taiwan Strait would then become unnecessary.

She also highlighted the need for increased exchanges between the US and mainland China, saying this would boost global stability and Taiwan’s security along with it.

Meanwhile, her coming visit has rattled Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, with Premier Cho Jung-tai on Tuesday warning against any talks or agreements touching on government authority.

Sun’s mausoleum holds deep symbolic significance for the KMT and cross-strait ties, with party leaders routinely paying tribute there on past visits.

In March last year, ma

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