Cheng Li-wun, the head of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT), is leading a delegation to China from April 7 to 12. It’s the first such visit by a KMT chair in a decade, and Cheng is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The KMT, originally the ruling party of the Taiwanese dictatorship and vehemently opposed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has become considerably friendlier to the CCP than Taiwan’s now-ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is.

Many had assumed Cheng’s trip would come only after U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to China. Instead, after Trump’s trip was postponed, Beijing moved Cheng’s visit forward. On the surface, this separates the two events and reinforces Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is a purely domestic matter for China. Yet Beijing clearly hopes to use Cheng’s trip—especially a Xi-Cheng meeting—to influence, and perhaps alter, some of Trump’s assumptions about Taiwan.

Cheng Li-wun, the head of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT), is leading a delegation to China from April 7 to 12. It’s the first such visit by a KMT chair in a decade, and Cheng is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The KMT, originally the ruling party of the Taiwanese dictatorship and vehemently opposed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has become considerably friendlier to the CCP than Taiwan’s now-ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is.

Many had assumed Cheng’s trip would come only after U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to China. Instead, after Trump’s trip was postponed, Beijing moved Cheng’s visit forward. On the surface, this separates the two events and reinforces Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is a purely domestic matter for China. Yet Beijing clearly hopes to use Cheng’s trip—especially a Xi-Cheng meeting—to influence, and perhaps alter, some of Trump’s assumptions about Taiwan.

What Beijing is really contesting is who gets to define “peace and stability” in the Taiwan Strait and what actually produces it.

The strait has often been described as one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints. China has repeatedly conducted military exercises around Taiwan, and tensions have at times appeared severe. Yet the strait has, broadly speaking, remained stable. Washington and the DPP explain that stability in the same way: Peace comes from deterrence and stability from strength. In their telling, it is the combined result of U.S. military deterrence against Beijing and Taiwan’s steadily growing self-defense capability.

This is built into policy. Last year’s U.S. National Security Strategy called for stronger deterrence against China along the first island chain, of which Taiwan is a key part. The State Department’s fiscal year 2026 budget justification directly links enhancing Taiwan’s self-defense capability, strengthening cross-strait deterrence, and maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and his administration have echoed the same logic under the slogan of “seeking peace through strength,” tying extra defense spending and stronger social resilience to peace across the strait. Trump earlier signed what was described as the largest-ever U.S. arms package for Taiwan, and another, even larger one is reportedly under consideration. Taiwan’s legislature is also reviewing a special defense budget of $40 billion.

Beijing’s invitation to Cheng is aimed at breaking this U.S.-Taiwan narrative and reclaiming the authority to provide its own explanation of what peace and stability in the strait rest on. The invitation, issued in Xi’s name, described Cheng’s trip as intended to “promote the peaceful development of relations between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang and of cross-strait relations.”

At a press conference on April 1, Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office made the point even more directly: Peace, development, exchanges, and cooperation are the mainstream aspirations of Taiwanese society, and as long as the “1992 Consensus” is upheld and “Taiwanese independence” opposed, the strait can remain peaceful and stable; otherwise, tensions and turmoil will follow. The 1992 Consensus refers to a meeting between the then ruling-KMT and the CCP at which a loose agreement was supposedly made—but one whose meaning, in typical cross-strait fashion, is extremely disputed.

In this case, the key interpretation is Beijing’s, which claims that the two sides agreed that only one China exists and that China is the People’s Republic. (The KMT, in contrast, recognizes “different interpretations” of “One China.”) But the force of the statement lies not in the routine promotion of the 1992 Consensus but in its attempt to shift the key explanation for peace and stability away from U.S. arms sales and deterrence and back to the internal political foundation of cross-strait relations. Peace, Beijing is claiming, is not something Washington delivers. Stability is not something Taiwan can buy with weapons.

The first thing a Xi-Cheng meeting would reshape is not U.S.-China relations but political competition inside Taiwan over who gets to claim the mantle of peace. For years, the DPP and the United States have promoted a simple formula: More arms purchases, stronger preparedness, and deeper U.S.-Taiwan security cooperation are the only guarantee of stability. Cheng’s trip offers a rival formula: Recognize the 1992 Consensus, resume dialogue, restrain from independence, and peace can also be maintained. That may not persuade most Taiwanese immediately, but it does crack the monopoly of the weapons-and-deterrence narrative.

Cheng has echoed that line. Before departing, she said the trip could mark a first step toward peace and stability across the strait, stressing that “because of the 1992 Consensus, we can create peace,” and that she wanted to show both Taiwan and the world that war between the two sides is not inevitable.

Her message closely parallels Beijing’s. Both locate the source of peace and stability in a shared political foundation rather than in outside deterrence. The difference is one of purpose. Beijing wants to advance a broader anti-independence, pro-unification framework; Cheng wants to reclaim for the KMT the right to say that it, too, can manage cross-strait risk.

Beijing is staging a concrete scene for the outside world: Before Trump has arrived in China and before Washington has made any new Taiwan-related move in this interval, the two sides of the strait can already resume high-level political contact under the 1992 framework without any need for outside intervention. At the very least, this shows that communication and de-escalation are possible. Beijing’s message to Washington is simple: Even without new U.S. arms sales or fresh deterrent signals, the strait has not devolved into chaos.

This does not mean U.S. military deterrence has no effect on Beijing’s own calculations. What it wants to show is that deterrence does not provide the decisive explanation for peace and stability in the strait. Military pressure may affect Beijing’s risk assessment, but it cannot by itself create political trust across the strait. Arms sales may strengthen Taiwan’s defenses, but they cannot substitute for a political mechanism of communication.

That is the distinction Beijing wants to force into view. Washington and Taipei may continue to argue that deterrence is useful, but real peace and stability do not actually come from deterrence. As long as the authorities in Taiwan refuse to recognize the 1992 Consensus, no amount of U.S. weaponry can produce genuine stability. At best, it can sustain a fragile equilibrium, not the kind of stability Beijing is trying to project—one based on communication, de-escalation, and manageability.

This also explains why Beijing has tried to de-Americanize its public handling of Cheng’s trip. Chinese state media and the Taiwan Affairs Office have framed it as a matter of KMT-CCP relations, cross-strait relations, and mainstream opinion in Taiwan, not as a subplot in U.S.-China rivalry. Officials have even emphasized that affairs across the strait are a “family matter” for Chinese on both sides.

Beijing does not expect this argument to persuade Trump to reduce arms sales or fundamentally revise U.S. Taiwan policy. Its more realistic goal is to make him see that Lai and the pro-independence camp do not represent all of Taiwan and that there remains an important political force on the island willing to oppose formal independence, engage in dialogue, and support peaceful cross-strait development.

Taiwanese society is unlikely to accept that argument in full. Washington almost certainly will not either. But once Beijing has demonstrated its case through a genuine high-level interaction rather than slogans alone, it becomes harder for the United States to insist that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are defined entirely by Washington and explained solely by U.S. deterrence.