Former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou has begun a nine-day trip to mainland China – his third in two years – amid accusations from pro-independence voices that he is compromising the self-ruled island’s interests.
Ma’s delegation, which includes a group of Taiwanese university students, was greeted by municipal officials and well-wishers at the airport when they arrived in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province in the northeast, on Wednesday.
Ma was due to meet Song Tao, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, in the evening – their first meeting since Ma visited the mainland in April, when he promoted cross-strait student exchanges.
The former Taiwanese leader will attend a cross-strait youth ice and snow festival while he is in Harbin, and will also travel to Sichuan province in the southwest before returning to Taiwan on December 26.
Ma told reporters at Taoyuan International Airport before he left the island that exchanges between young people from Taiwan and mainland China “are especially important now, with wars frequent across the globe and cross-strait relations more tense than during my presidency”.
Ties between Beijing and Taipei were relatively stable when Ma led Taiwan from 2008 to 2016.