Youth visit promotes cross-Strait exchanges: China Daily editorial

Ma Ying-jeou, former chairman of the Chinese Kuomintang party, hit the nail on the head when he said, before departing Taiwan for his third visit to the Chinese mainland on Wednesday, the more cross-Strait youth exchanges there are, the less chance there will be for a conflict between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Ma, who was the head of the island's authorities from 2008 to 2016, said that the exchanges between young people on the two sides of the Strait were aimed at building "a bridge for peace".

During the nine-day tour, the youth delegation he is leading is scheduled to visit Heilongjiang and Sichuan provinces to participate in a cross-Strait youth ice and snow festival in the former, as well as other events, according to the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council.

Considering that the tour was arranged just two weeks after a mainland youth delegation concluded a nine-day visit to the island, it is fair to say the youth exchanges across the Strait have become markedly more frequent recently, reflecting the common wishes of the Chinese people on the two sides of the Strait to continuously strengthen people-to-people exchanges. Something the secessionists on the island are trying to block to meet their narrow ends.

The family hospitality the Taiwan youths experience during their stay on the mainland should let them feel a sense of homecoming. The trip is also expected to provide those who have never been to the mainland with a valuable firsthand experience to see for themselves what the other side of the Strait is like, helping them to see through the secessionist-minded Democratic Progressive Party's yearslong smearing of the mainland, and de-sinicization attempts with the youths as their key target audience.

The DPP authorities should be held accountable for the tense cross-Strait relations, which fundamentally contradict the common interests of people on both sides of the Strait, as it is their reckless collusion with external forces in pursuit of their objective to separate the island from its motherland that is the root cause of the rising tensions.

Although the Ukraine crisis and the Taiwan question are totally different in nature, with the latter being China's internal affair that brooks no interference from any external party, the DPP authorities and their foreign patrons are trying their best to mislead the world to make the two comparable so that they can channel the ready support for the US proxies in the former to the latter and covertly establish the false status of the island, which is an inalienable part of China, as a "sovereign state".

The mainland has exercised considerable restraint in the face of the continuous provocations from the DPP authorities, as Beijing has always borne a bigger picture in mind, and is committed to exhausting all means for a peaceful reunification of the country.

The great lengths the DPP authorities are going to in trying to justify and realize their secessionist goal, in defiance of the Taiwan compatriots' opposition, make them the largest security threat to the residents on the island, whom they are willing to use as a human shield and hostages in pursuit of their goal.

The cross-Strait tensions have risen further since Lai Ching-te succeeded Tsai Ing-wen as head of the DPP authorities in May and proceeded to try and push the envelope on the DPP's agenda. The biggest challenge facing cross-Strait relations at present is that the DPP authorities are stubbornly adhering to their secessionist stance and are betting the island's future on their gamble that external forces will enable them to change the reality: the island is a part of China of which the Central Government in Beijing is the sole legal representative.

However, the more the DPP secessionists try to sever cross-Strait ties by obstructing people-to-people exchanges, the more support the mainland will provide to set the stage for people-to-people interactions between the two sides of the Strait. Apart from Ma's visit, that the annual 2024 Shanghai-Taipei City Forum held in Taipei from Monday to Tuesday concluded with full success was another nail in the coffin for the DPP authorities' secessionist endeavors.

Beijing will always be committed to promoting youth exchanges and economic, trade and governance cooperation across the Strait so as to continuously expand the common interests and deepen mutual understanding of the two sides of the Strait. In doing so, it is also effectively squeezing the space the DPP authorities can exploit for their secessionist cause.