Xi Jinping met KMT chair Cheng Li-wun in the Great Hall of the People on April 10 -- the first meeting between a sitting CCP General Secretary and a sitting KMT chair in nearly a decade. Xi talked peaceful reunification, compatriots as one family, and patience, citing the old fable of the foolish old man moving mountains. He skipped "One Country, Two Systems." He kept the line that Taiwan independence is "the chief culprit." Meanwhile PLA daily sorties around Taiwan have dropped to near-zero on some days. Trump lands in Beijing May 14.

1. The Softening Is Real (Wen-Ti Sung, Lev Nachman, Foreign Policy)

Beijing wants to show it can talk to Taiwan directly without Washington running the meeting. Signalling patience is the point.

The softening is deliberate de-escalation. Wen-Ti Sung at the Atlantic Council reads it that way: Xi avoided the harder formulations -- One China Principle, One Country Two Systems -- and used the looser 1992 Consensus instead. There was no joint statement, which gave Cheng room to frame the meeting on her own terms. NTU's Lev Nachman says Cheng can now tell Taiwan voters the KMT can lead Taiwan toward peace and stability where the DPP can't. Foreign Policy's editorial line called the meeting evidence Beijing still treats Taiwan as a solvable dispute.

The numbers track with the language. Janes Open Source recorded China's war-rhetoric indicator dropping from high to moderate between June 2025 and February 2026. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense reported as few as two PLA aircraft in the ADIZ on three days in March. From Feb 27 to March 5, the count was zero. GMF's Bonnie Glaser made the related point that Xi's near-term priority looks like preventing independence, not forcing unification.

2. It's A Trap For Trump (Grzegorz Stec, President Lai, Taiwan MAC)

Soften the language, frame Taiwan as a domestic Chinese matter, watch Trump nod along in Beijing without realizing he's just shifted US policy.

Trump will be led to China's position like a horse to water. By reframing the goal as opposing Taiwan independence -- which Washington nominally also opposes -- rather than active reunification, Xi gives Trump an easy way to echo Beijing without picking a fight. Even silence on Taiwan during the summit could be read as tacit approval. The framing positions Taiwan as a domestic Chinese matter, not an international one.

Taiwan's government is not buying any of it. The Mainland Affairs Council, run by Chiu Chui-cheng, said the peace framework is in fact a unification agenda, and warned that the domestic-matter framing raises concerns about how the world responds when Taiwan needs help. President Lai Ching-te wrote that compromising with authoritarian regimes sacrifices sovereignty and democracy, and brings neither freedom nor peace. Long-running skeptics like Matt Pottinger and Oriana Skylar Mastro have argued for years that Beijing softens language exactly when it's preparing for the next escalation.

3. But Trump Is Still Arming Taiwan (Atlantic Council, Janes, Taipei Times)

Trump committed a $40 billion defense budget at home. That's real.

Trump's record arms package complicates the read. His administration just announced an $11.154 billion arms deal for Taiwan, the largest ever. So the US is selling more weapons while Beijing is dialing down rhetoric -- and Xi is still hosting his summit in three weeks. The two sides are doing the opposite of what their language says. That's either smart deterrence or a setup for confusion, and it's probably both.

Where This Lands

Where this lands depends on whether Trump signals a clear US position on Taiwan in Beijing or hands Xi a victory by staying silent, on whether Lai's special defense budget survives Cheng's KMT opposition, and on whether the PLA sortie drop holds past the summit. The patience speech can be read as patience or as preparation. The next month tells us which.

Sources