It was an unusually creative gesture for Xi Jinping to agree to an unprecedented meeting with Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou, the first such meeting between mainland and Taiwan heads of government in sixty-six years. Some even suggested a parallel with Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972.
But when the dust settled in Singapore, it was a meeting that lasted fifty minutes, produced no agreements or obvious new directions in cross-Strait relations. Its main import was that it actually happened. The measure of its significance will only be evident after Taiwan’s presidential elections next January. Will the Xi-Ma encounter reinforce stability or be the harbinger of new cross-Strait tensions if, as expected, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen is Ma’s successor as president?
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