I have just published a note for Fondation Jean-Jaurès on the Kuomintang’s pivot towards Beijing and what it tells us about democratic resilience — in Asia and in Europe.

Fondation Jean-Jaurès

Fondation Jean-Jaurès is a French think tank, recognised as a public-utility foundation, founded in 1992 and associated with the social-democratic family. Its work is organised around three pillars: studies and research, international cooperation, and history and memory. It regularly publishes notes, investigations and op-eds to inform public debate on the major contemporary transformations — democracy, climate, geopolitics, social cohesion.

The subject of the note

In April 2026, Cheng Li-wun, chair of the Kuomintang (KMT, nationalist right) — Taiwan’s main opposition party — travelled to China at the invitation of Xi Jinping. It was the first visit at that level in ten years. During the trip, Cheng adopted the vocabulary of the Chinese Communist Party and dropped the diplomatic safeguards that had protected Taiwan’s sovereignty in cross-strait dialogue for twenty years.

The note analyses the political and strategic consequences of this shift: the reconfiguration of the Taiwanese opposition, the signals sent to Beijing and Washington one year ahead of the local elections, and a comparative reading — what this case says to European democracies facing parties that likewise borrow the language of authoritarian powers.

Read the full note on the Fondation Jean-Jaurès website

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Logo: Fondation Jean-Jaurès — used for editorial purposes to identify the publisher of the note.