Ex-Republic of China President Ma Ying-jeou, of the RoC’s pro-People’s Republic of China Kuomintang Party, was invited to and met with PRC President Xi Jinping, and they talked about the prospects for improved relations across the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait that separates Taiwan from mainland China.

Amanda Hsiao, a Taipei-based analyst with the Brussels-headquartered International Crisis Group, accurately characterized the meeting:

Beijing is trying to show for an international audience that they are open to dialogue with Taiwan—open to peaceful unification. All of which is an attempt to try to make China appear more reasonable.

Indeed. But it’s dialog within a PRC framework: Xi: “Stop resisting. Surrender and be assimilated into the body of the People’s Republic of China.” Ma: “Yes, Sir.”

In addition to Hsaio’s characterization, thought, the Xi-Ma meeting also was an in-your-face counter to our own Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s White House contemporaneous meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (which Philippine’s President Ferdinand Marcos Jr later will join them) regarding PRC aggressiveness.

For each reason, and especially for both together, Biden’s response to the Xi-Ma meeting will be important for RoC security.