Ma Ying-jeou, the former President of Taiwan, said the island must trust Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
"As far as cross-strait relations, you have to [trust Xi]," the 73-year-old said in an interview with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle published Wednesday, three days before the self-ruled island's presidential and legislative elections.
Ma, who remains an influential figure within Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), served as president from 2008 to 2016. He made history as the first Taiwanese leader to meet with his Chinese counterpart. The Ma-Xi meeting was hosted by Singapore in 2015.
Newsweek reached out to the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. with a written request for comment.
Ma framed the upcoming electoral contest as a choice between peace and war—an echo of the message Beijing has been sending Taiwan in recent months.
The former president said that the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential nominee, Vice President Lai Ching-te, was previously open about having pro-independence views.
Ma acknowledged that Lai has "toned down" his public statements in recent years and now says he favors maintaining the status quo—a position polls show to be currently supported by a majority of Taiwanese. However, he said, "I'm sure the guys in Mainland China would be very nervous about a person like this."
Lai, like current President Tsai Ying-wen, has said Taiwan does not need to declare de jure independence because it is already a sovereign state.
Beijing has listed an official declaration of independence by Taipei as one of the reasons that would lead it to launch a war across the Taiwan Strait.
"No matter how much you defend yourself, you can never fight a war with the mainland. You can never win, they [China] are too large, too much stronger than us," Ma said.
At a press conference later that day, DPP spokesperson Tai Wei-shan rebuked Ma, calling his views "a departure from reality" and inconsistent with the majority of Taiwanese.
Meanwhile, KMT's presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih said his and Ma's views were "somewhat different.
In recent years, Chinese warplanes have flown near-daily sorties across the median line, a de facto buffer zone in the middle of the Taiwan Strait that Beijing once tacitly respected.
China has also increased the scale of its military drills in surrounding waters to demonstrate its displeasure, as seen following former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 2022 visit to Taipei.
Taiwanese officials have called attention to China's increasingly sophisticated methods of interfering in the island's democratic process aimed at nudging the elections in Beijing's favor.
Speaking on background at a press conference on Thursday, a Biden administration official reiterated Washington's support for Taiwan's democratic processes, pointing to the strong bipartisan backing in Washington for free elections on the island.
Describing Taiwan as a "model for democracy," the official said the U.S. opposes all external interference or influence in Taiwan's elections and rejects unilateral changes to the status quo from any involved party.
"Beijing will be the provocateur should it choose to respond with additional military pressure or coercion," the official said, pointing out that disruption to stability across the 100-mile strait would deal a blow to the world economy given Taiwan's central role in global supply chains.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian ... Read more
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