Cheng Li-wun and the ‘Taiwanised’ KMT: A story Taiwan may not buy

Cheng Li-wun, chair of Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), formally began her long-planned visit to mainland China on 7 April, arriving in Shanghai on a Shanghai Airlines flight. Early the following morning on 8 April, she travelled to Nanjing’s Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum to pay homage to Sun Yat-sen — the party’s founder and venerated as the “founding father of the Republic of China”. He died in Beijing 101 years ago and was laid to rest there in 1929.

Sun is highly revered in official narratives on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. On the mainland, he is hailed as a “great pioneer of China’s democratic revolution” who led the Xinhai Revolution and founded Asia’s first Republic. Such appraisals may have become political rhetoric on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to some extent. Yet as a historical link across the Taiwan Strait, successive KMT chairpersons, on their visits to the mainland, invariably pay homage at the mausoleum and use memorial tributes and speeches to set out their views on cross-strait relations.

A KMT chair’s address at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum must bridge shared history and sentiment across the Taiwan Strait, uphold Taiwan’s dignity, and remain acceptable both to Beijing officials and Taiwan’s electorate — this is no easy task. In Cheng’s case, she also faces the added pressure of leading the party to victory in the local elections in the second half of the year, a burden heavier than that borne by her predecessors, Ma Ying-jeou and Hung Hsiu-chu.

Yet during Cheng Li-wun’s visit to mainland China, the speech at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum also stood out as the segment where she had the most room to manoeuvre and the most time to prepare in advance, and it accordingly drew significant attention.

Cheng’s 18-minute address on 8 April at Bo’ai Square of the mausoleum was fully penned by her. She spoke with evident emotion, becoming increasingly moved when invoking “the overthrow of imperial rule”, and was visibly choked up when she said: “Dr Sun, do you know? On a lonely overseas island, there was also a nameless youth with tears of anguish streaming down his face. This single line laid bare the heartbreaking grief of the Taiwanese people under colonial rule.”

Observers noted that, compared with predecessors such as Ma, Cheng was the first to frame cross-strait history through the lens of Taiwanese sentiment, showcasing a narrative of a “Taiwanised KMT”. While Ma and others typically focused on the cooperation and conflicts between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the mainland, they rarely offered a serious discourse on the connection between the Xinhai Revolution and the Taiwanese people.

Conversely, Cheng opened her speech by depicting how a Taiwanese youth on a “lonely overseas island” in 1925 had mourned the death of Sun. She specifically highlighted historical instances of Taipei merchants and Tainan opera troupes spontaneously celebrating the restoration of Han Chinese rule or commemorating the 72 Martyrs of Huanghuagang.

Cheng also made two references to the term “Taiwanese people” (台湾民族, Taiwan minzu, with minzu meaning ethnicity). She hailed Sun as the “mentor for the liberation of the Taiwanese people”, while noting that Chiang Wei-shui — a democracy pioneer and anti-colonial activist — “founded the Taiwanese People’s Party in 1927, grounding its manifesto in Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People, thereby completing the discourse and roadmap for the liberation of the Taiwanese people”.

Cheng also acknowledged mistakes the KMT made after coming to Taiwan, including the 228 Incident, the White Terror and 38 years of martial law. She described the present cross-strait situation as an unhealed “wound cut open by the sword of Japanese imperialism”. 

She reiterated the significance of the 1992 Consensus and asserted that the KMT had “successfully built Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu into a good society of democracy, freedom, rule of law and shared prosperity”, and commented that the mainland’s progress and development had “exceeded everyone’s expectations and imagination”.

As expected, Taiwan’s Blue and Green camps have polarised takes of Cheng’s mainland trip. Figures in the Blue camp praised her for forging her own path. 

Liu Chin‑tsai, an associate professor in public administration and international affairs at Fo Guang University, wrote that amid a fragmented cross-strait historical identity, Cheng sought to forge a continuous narrative. She linked the “late-Qing revolution”, “Japanese-ruled Taiwan”, “Republican-era nation-building” and “cross-strait reconciliation” into a single historical arc — recasting both sides of the strait as a “community of blood and ideas” while pushing back against claims that the Kuomintang is a foreign regime.

Green media have shown little interest in Cheng’s visit or have mocked her for going to the mainland to hold a “Xi-Cheng meeting” with the CCP general secretary while blocking arms-purchase bills at home. They noted that this has pushed her March approval rating down to just 23.9%, with 54.5% expressing distrust — figures even weaker than those of the KMT itself.

In fact, even some relatively neutral commentators were pessimistic about the trip, seeing it as a major headwind on the KMT’s prospects in the elections later this year. Grassroots campaigners reportedly felt the pressure, with opinion within the Blue camp divided. 

One notable exception is Lu Shiow-yen, the mayor of Taichung and a Kuomintang heavyweight widely seen as a frontrunner for the 2028 presidential race. On 8 April, she publicly backed Cheng’s visit, saying that promoting cross-strait peace is “the right thing” and “something one must have the courage to do”.

When Cheng took over as party chair, she pledged to “open up a century of cross-strait peace”; in Shanghai on 9 April, she also claimed that the gift she was bringing to family and friends in Taiwan from this trip was peace. So far, she has acted in line with her chosen path and has been received in Beijing with high-level courtesy. Yet, her attempt to articulate a “Taiwanised KMT” narrative that bridges both sides of the strait has so far gained little traction in Taiwan, and her proposed notion of a distinct “Taiwanese people” has likewise drawn limited attention.

The notion of a “Taiwanese people” emphasises Taiwan’s distinct identity while remaining compatible with the broader framework of the “Chinese people” (Zhonghua minzu, 中华民族). Cheng Li-wen’s articulation of this idea may also be shaped by her own Yi ethnic roots in Yunnan.

However, the more crucial question is whether this mainland trip can actually boost her and the KMT’s electoral fortunes. If not, it may still be said that she has made a considerable effort to advance cross-strait relations. But in Taiwan’s political reality, if one cannot win elections and take power, then their hands are ultimately tied.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “郑丽文在大陆提出“台湾民族”论”.

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