BEIJING — China moved Sunday to pair fresh economic and travel incentives for Taiwan with its long-running political pressure campaign after President Xi Jinping met Kuomintang Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun, rolling out a 10-point package while continuing to shun President Lai Ching-te’s government, April 12, 2026. The offer was meant to show Beijing can still deliver practical benefits on tourism, trade and exchanges when it finds a willing interlocutor in Taiwan, even as sovereignty disputes and military pressure keep the broader relationship tense.
What Beijing’s 10-point package includes
The move followed Xi’s Friday meeting with Cheng and was formalized in the mainland’s official 10-measure package, which promised faster restoration of direct flights, tourism openings, easier market access for some Taiwanese goods and stronger party-to-party exchanges. The message from Beijing was familiar: practical benefits are available, but only inside a political framework that rejects Taiwan independence and leans on the “1992 Consensus.”
In its initial account of the rollout, Reuters reported that the measures would explore a regular communication mechanism between the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT, allow certain Taiwanese television content onto mainland platforms and ease procedures for food and fishery products. In a Taiwan-centered breakdown, Focus Taiwan said several items appeared aimed at sectors such as tourism and fisheries and could still be hard to implement without coordination from Taipei.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council sharply rejected the package’s political framing, calling Beijing’s unilateral concessions “poisoned pills” wrapped as generosity, while the KMT welcomed the announcement as a boost for ordinary Taiwanese. That split captured the immediate political effect of the offer: Beijing appeared to reward a party willing to keep talking while sidelining the government that holds the presidency.
China-Taiwan relations remain split between outreach and pressure
Any impression of a sudden thaw was quickly undercut by the wider security picture. In separate remarks covered by Reuters, American Institute in Taiwan Director Raymond Greene said Beijing should keep open channels with all of Taiwan’s political parties — especially the leaders chosen by voters — and should abandon threats and military pressure if it wants more stable ties. His point underscored the contradiction in Beijing’s current approach: it is offering selective incentives to chosen Taiwanese interlocutors while maintaining coercive pressure on the elected government.
That makes the new package look less like reconciliation than a calibrated political signal. Beijing still refuses to deal directly with Lai, whom it brands a separatist, yet it is willing to reopen limited lanes of trade, travel and party-to-party contact when the interlocutor is the KMT. For airlines, tourism operators and fishing communities, that could bring real if narrow benefits. For Taiwan’s government, it is another reminder that Beijing wants to set the terms of engagement rather than bargain over them.
Why this package fits a longer Beijing playbook
The latest offer also partly reverses decisions China made when tensions were moving the other way. Beijing halted individual travel permits for Taiwan in 2019, then suspended some fruit and fish imports in 2022 after then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei. It has also kept cultivating KMT channels; when Xi met former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou in Beijing in 2024, Reuters noted that Ma had first met Xi in Singapore in 2015, showing that today’s outreach is part of a longer pattern, not a sudden reset.
That history matters because it suggests the 10-point package is not a breakthrough on its own. It is better understood as another attempt to show Taiwanese voters and businesses that engagement with Beijing can bring selective gains, while any administration that rejects Beijing’s formula will continue to face pressure.
