Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou is running into skepticism at home over his impending historic meeting with China’s president, aimed at locking in the dialogue that he has built — from zero — with Beijing during his nearly eight years in office.
No deals will be signed when Ma meets Xi Jinping on Saturday in Singapore, his government assures, and the first-ever Taiwan-China presidential summit will simply “consolidate” peace. But hopes of peace and partnerships are clashing with fears the island democracy is getting sucked too deeply into the orbit of the Communist mainland it split from in 1949.
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There has been no similar reaction to the Ma-Xi meeting: Protesters have numbered in the dozens, not thousands. But holding the meeting is still “tricky politically in Taiwan,” said Alan Romberg, East Asia Program director with Washington think tank the Stimson Center.
“The opposition will obviously use this to charge Ma and the Nationalist Party with kowtowing to Beijing,” Romberg said.
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