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<\/a><\/p>\nTAOYUAN, Taiwan (Reuters) – Tension with China has escalated under Taiwan’s government and the island will in future have to choose between “peace and war”, former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said on Friday at the end of a landmark visit to China.<\/p>\n
Ma is the first former Taiwanese president to ever visit China. Since the defeated Republic of China government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists, no serving island leader has visited China.<\/p>\n
“Our administration continues to lead Taiwan to danger. The future is a choice between peace and war,” Ma told reporters at Taiwan’s main airport after arriving from Shanghai at the end of his 12-day visit to China.<\/p>\n
Ma was president from 2008 to 2016 as the head of a Kuomintang (KMT) government. The party, now in opposition, favours close ties with China, which claims the island as its own.<\/p>\n
Ma’s visit came at a time of heightened tension with China’s anger roused this week by a meeting between Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, during a stopover by the Taiwan leader in the United States.<\/p>\n
Beijing has been stepping up its political and military pressure to get democratically governed Taiwan to accept Chinese sovereignty. <\/p>\n
Tsai and her government reject that and say only the island’s people can decide their future. <\/p>\n
Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) criticised Ma’s trip but he said it had proven that Taiwan and China could engage under the principle that both are part of a single China though each can have its own interpretation of the term.<\/p>\n
Ma said Taiwan could share a “common political basis” with China, which would be in the best interests of the people of Taiwan.<\/p>\n
Tsai’s DPP said in a statement Ma had become an “accomplice” of Beijing’s “one China” principle and he had failed to take the opportunity to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
Tsai has offered talks with China but Beijing, which views her as a separatist, has rebuffed her.<\/p>\n
Ma met Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 in Singapore, shortly before Tsai was elected president, but he did not meet the Chinese leader on this trip.<\/p>\n
He visited historic sites in several cities including Wuhan, where he met Song Tao, the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.<\/p>\n
The KMT has defended its contacts with China saying it is trying to reduce tension and it will trumpet that line in the run-up to a presidential election in January.<\/p>\n
Ma said he would continue to work in a private capacity “to ensure Taiwan has a future of real peace and safety”.<\/p>\n
\n(Reporting By Ann Wang and Yimou Lee; Editing by Robert Birsel)<\/p>\n
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