TAIPEI -- Chinese leader Xi Jinping welcomed the leader of Taiwan's main opposition party for a rare meeting in Beijing, leaning in to his campaign to steer the self-ruled democracy closer to China and nudge the U.S. to the sidelines.
Xi invited Nationalist Party Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun to China this week ahead of a mid-May summit with President Trump in which the Chinese leader could continue a push to dilute Washington's support for Taiwan. Xi and Cheng met Friday morning local time, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
The meeting sent a message to Trump and to Taipei: China wants to absorb Taiwan peacefully -- despite its threat to use force -- and sees Cheng's party, also known as the Kuomintang, or KMT, as its best course for dialogue and political influence.
By hosting Cheng, Xi is presenting himself as a force for stability who can be entrusted with ensuring peace, as long as Taiwan participates.
While Cheng advocates undiluted engagement with China, Beijing refuses to engage with Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which is focused on building stronger defenses against China.
"Beijing wants to use the meeting to reframe policy options for Taipei and Washington," said Amanda Hsiao, a China director for the Eurasia Group, a political-risk advisory firm.
"Beijing will use the meeting to portray itself as a peacemaker to Washington, in the hopes of convincing Trump that expressing openness to peaceful unification or holding off on arms sales to Taiwan for longer will be conducive to managing tensions," she said.
The Trump administration approved $11 billion in arms sales last year, but further sales were left in limbo following a Chinese pressure campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Beijing sees U.S. moves to ease tensions with China as providing an opening to advance its long-running campaign to absorb the island across the Taiwan Strait, which the Chinese government considers part of its territory.
The Cheng visit is unlikely to substantially alter the substance of Trump's meeting with Xi, said Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution.
For Beijing, the visit recenters "cross-strait dynamics around leaders in Beijing and Taipei and away from other international actors," he said.
It also offers China an opportunity to influence debates in Taiwan and show a domestic audience that Beijing is working to shift Taiwan's politics "in directions more favorable to cross-strait integration and eventual unification," Hass said.
Xi's appearance with Cheng, who became party chairwoman in November, elevates her stature as a new partner in that campaign. Her meeting with the Chinese leader is the first in a decade for an incumbent leader of her party.
Before Cheng's election as KMT chairwoman, she was asked if she planned to meet Xi if she won. "I'd see him a hundred times if that's what it takes," she replied.
Traveling in China with a dozen or so other party officials, Cheng said earlier this week that she wanted to "plant the seeds of peace."
"Cheng Li-wun seems to be a more willing partner than previous KMT leaders, and I suspect that Beijing would like to boost her stature as a result," said Kharis Templeman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
A boost would be useful for Cheng. The KMT has been out of power for nearly 10 years. But it has used its sway in the opposition-controlled Taiwan Legislature to put the brakes on a $40 billion special defense budget delivered by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, proposing a smaller version of the budget.
The DPP budget includes up to about $30 billion of weapons procurements from the U.S. Two U.S. congressional delegations have traveled to Taipei in recent weeks to lobby for its passage.
"When you pass the special budget in the Legislature, that is a signal to China, and to the rest of the world, that Taiwan is serious about peace through strength," Sen. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) told Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te recently in Taipei.
"It is difficult to overstate just how much of an impact the fate of this budget will have for U.S.-Taiwan relations," said David Sacks, an Asia-focused fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
For Washington, "I don't think there is any trepidation about Cheng's visit to China per se," he said. "But there would be concern if there is a sense that the cost of such meetings is for Taiwan to invest less in its defense."
Any step by Taiwan toward engagement is a gain for Beijing, which has shown unbridled hostility for Lai and his campaign to bolster Taiwan’s defenses.
"Xi could also be looking to leverage this meeting to present a narrative to President Trump that President Lai does not represent Taiwanese public opinion -- that he is an outlier and a dangerous figure that the United States needs to contain," said Sacks.
Cheng, 56 years old, entered politics after her early days as a student activist participating in pro-democracy protests against the KMT. At a 1980s rally, she stood before a banner advocating an independent Taiwan and denounced the then-ruling party.
Later, following Taiwan's 1990s transition to democracy, Cheng pivoted away from the DPP and criticized what was then its pro-independence stance.
The DPP has since dialed back its rhetoric, but its prolonged grip on Taiwan's presidency has been a challenge for Beijing, which stages large-scale military exercises around the island when it wants to show extreme displeasure.
"Xi is looking beyond Lai, to Taiwan's 2028 presidential election," said Sacks. "He does not want to see the DPP in power for 16 consecutive years, so his priority is making Lai a one-term president."