Taiwan’s opposition leader tells US and China not to use her country as ‘pawn’

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The head of Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang party has urged the US and China not to treat the island as a “pawn”, just weeks after Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in China.

In an interview, Cheng Li-wun said Taiwan should not be used as leverage after President Trump said during his visit to Beijing that American arms sales to Taipei were a “good negotiating chip” with China.

“Taiwan can never become or be reduced to a pawn traded away at a negotiating table by great powers,” Cheng told the FT in New York before a visit to Washington for meetings with officials and lawmakers.

Cheng, a possible 2028 presidential contender who took over the KMT in November, is spending two weeks in the US to bolster support for her party. The KMT has faced scepticism in Washington over its more pro-engagement stance towards China than President Lai Ching-te.

Asked what her main message would be, Cheng said, “Peace”. In promoting the case for more dialogue between Taipei and Beijing, she said the suspension of exchanges over the past decade had created “huge tensions” across the Taiwan Strait.

“There has been no dialogue, so you can see that the situation is almost on the brink of war,” she said. “A lot of Taiwanese people are very concerned, hoping that Taiwan will not become the next Ukraine.”

Cheng said the US’s role in maintaining peace was “indispensable” and that particularly after the Trump-Xi summit, she hoped Washington would “play an even more constructive and positive leading role facilitating peace across east Asia and the Taiwan Strait”.

In April, Cheng became the first KMT leader to visit China and meet President Xi in a decade. She said her pro-engagement stance would help promote stability. But she is expected to face questions from US politicians who are concerned that the engagement could undermine deterrence.

Cheng said she would tell US lawmakers that their concerns were “totally unnecessary” and that most countries in the world believed cross-strait dialogue was necessary to avoid miscalculation.

“Improving cross-strait relations does not mean that Taiwan is going to give up on our own deterrence,” Cheng said.

She said there was no need for scepticism. “Since World War Two, the KMT has been a very important partner for the US,” she said. “This will not change and we certainly value building mutual trust with the US.”

US lawmakers were also frustrated that the KMT forced President Lai and his ruling DPP party to cut a special defence budget from $40bn to $25bn. The budget provides funding to buy US weapons but the cut impacts domestically manufactured drones that the US believes are necessary to boost deterrence against China.

Cheng pushed back, saying the KMT was not opposed to funding drones. She blamed the outcome on domestic politics, saying the DPP had violated legislative principles with an “outrageous” proposal. In Taiwan, the DPP has accused the KMT of using such criticism to justify efforts to cut the budget.

Cheng said she has had “zero” interaction with Lai since becoming KMT chair, even following requests to meet ahead of her visit to China.

In Washington, Cheng is not expected to meet Trump. Several US people familiar with the matter said her White House meeting would be with Matt Tritle, who reports to the top Asia official Ivan Kanapathy.

In March, Kanapathy met Lu Hsiu-yen, the mayor of Taichung, who is another top contender to be the KMT’s presidential candidate in 2028.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Cheng’s team declined to comment about her specific meetings in Washington.

Asked whether her goal of more dialogue with China was aimed at preserving the status quo or finding a solution to the dispute with Beijing, Cheng said she wanted to “rule out any possible danger that can cause wars” and to “institutionalise the peaceful relationship”.

Cheng said the status quo could only be changed with the “willingness of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait”.

Many US lawmakers are sceptical about KMT engagement with China because they do not trust Xi. Asked if she trusted the Chinese leader, Cheng said it was critical to “build the dialogue and . . . peaceful relationship bit by bit”.

Cheng said Xi had demonstrated “tremendous goodwill” when they met, showing that the Chinese Communist Party “wants to use peaceful means to address cross-strait issues . . . instead of using force”.

“If the CCP really wants to use force to reunite Taiwan . . . they can just ignore the KMT,” she said. “Lai Ching-te . . . will continue to support his two-state theory and that would give a very good excuse to the CCP to use force against Taiwan.”