Henry Huiyao Wang says "Momentum for peaceful reunification across Taiwan Strait is growing"

"Recent shifts in Taiwan’s political environment and international attitudes suggest the time is right for cross-strait engagement," he says.

Below is the latest in Henry Huiyao Wang’s opinion column in the South China Morning Post

Recent months have witnessed an important shift in the political landscape across the Taiwan Strait, one that deserves careful consideration from policymakers in Asia, Europe and the United States. Despite considerable global turbulence, years of rising tensions in Asia and external pressure, there are emerging signs of stabilisation and even fresh momentum for peaceful momentum towards unification between mainland China and Taiwan.

Taiwan’s political environment has evolved significantly since its elections in January 2024. Contrary to predictions of heightened confrontation, the island experienced no major unrest or instability. Instead, the results produced an increasingly pluralistic political scene.

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost its majority, and the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) – both of which support more dialogue and economic engagement with the mainland – now command a working majority in the 113-seat Legislative Yuan. This is part of a broader diversification within Taiwan’s society and politics, creating a space for dialogue that has long been obstructed.

Most striking is the emergence of a new political dynamic within the KMT. Its recently elected chairwoman, Cheng Li-wun, has openly embraced the island’s Chinese cultural identity and has said she is willing to speak to President Xi Jinping “a hundred times” to advance dialogue.

This signals the possibility of a long-awaited return to pragmatic cross-strait engagement and reunification. Meanwhile, attempts by the ruling DPP to use a massive recall vote to expel a group of opposition lawmakers ultimately failed, with voters opting to keep them in office and leave the KMT-TPP opposition majority in the Legislative Yuan intact.

These internal shifts are taking place just as international attitudes are changing. During the recent summit between Xi and US President Donald Trump in Busan, South Korea, both sides avoided raising the matter of Taiwan. That omission is a sharp break from Washington’s habit of putting the issue near the top of the agenda.

Further clarifying Washington’s shift on the issue under the second Trump administration is the US president reportedly declining to approve more than US$400 million in military aid to Taiwan, as well as not allowing the DPP chairman to transit through New York en route to Latin America. These developments could represent the turning of a page in US-China relations: a recognition that escalating the Taiwan question benefits no one, and that external involvement risks transforming a long-standing domestic issue into an unnecessary flashpoint.

This shift in external attention coincides with a renewed historical moment on the mainland. Beijing held a high-level commemorative meeting at the Great Hall of the People on October 25, a day after China’s national legislature voted to designate the date as the Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration, a reminder of the island’s historical ties with the mainland.

At the same time, Beijing has repeatedly reaffirmed that its long-standing goal remains peaceful reunification, emphasising that integration would bring new opportunities for economic cooperation and expanded mobility. Such benefits are already taking shape.

Fujian province has launched a series of measures to integrate with Taiwan, offering residents opportunities to study, work, access social services and participate in local development. More than 350,000 cross-strait marriages are a reminder of the familial and cultural bonds between the two sides. According to the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office, cross-strait mobility has surged, with Taiwan residents making more than 4 million trips to the mainland in 2024, a 54 per cent increase from the previous year.

Other practical steps towards easier mobility have also accelerated. Just last month, the number of mainland ports able to issue an on-arrival, single-entry travel permit for Taiwan residents was expanded from 58 to 100, enabling those without valid documentation to apply on the spot and enter immediately.

Beijing has long maintained that the mainland would not extract a single yuan of Taiwan’s tax revenue after reunification, allowing all fiscal income on the island to be used for improving livelihoods and public services. Likewise, reunification would allow Taiwanese to host consulates general, semi-official offices, representative missions and the broader international presence necessary to support a far denser network of global cultural, economic and institutional links than is possible today.

Challenges remain, of course, including external actors using rhetoric that is unhelpful or even inflammatory. Recent remarks about the situation around Taiwan by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi were unnecessarily provocative and ill-timed. Not only were they out of step with regional sentiment and the broader need for stability, such statements also risked complicating an already sensitive moment.

Even so, despite these challenges, there is increasing momentum. There is a growing openness to engagement within Taiwan’s legislature. The appetite among the broader international community for turning the Taiwan question into a geopolitical battleground seems to be waning. And in mainland China, the emphasis remains on peaceful reunification achieved through dialogue, development and shared opportunity.

The path to resolving the Taiwan question has never been simple, but today it is clearer than it has been for years. If both sides seize the moment with wisdom, patience and direct communication, peaceful reunification would be within grasp. The only real complicating obstacle would be external interference, veiled as concern, in a Chinese domestic matter.

At a time when the world is watching conflicts elsewhere spiral seemingly without end, the Taiwan Strait stands on the threshold of a very different story – one of de-escalation, dialogue and the possibility of historic reconciliation. That is a future that all sides should work towards and a moment of opportunity that should not be allowed to slip away.