By Wendy Magagula

TAIPEI: Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou,an influential leader of the opposition Kuomintang(KMT)will visit China this month, Aljazeera reported on Tuesday.

Beijing has welcomed a plan by former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou of the self-ruled island’s main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party to visit China.

A Chinese government spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office said officials will provide Ma with any assistance he needs, the state-run Global Times reported on Tuesday.

Ma,who led the self-ruled island from 2008 to 2016, plans to visit China from March 27 until April 7, becoming the first former Taiwan leader to visit China since the nationalist government moved to Taipei at the end of the civil war in 1949.

Aljazeera reported that Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen told reporters that Ma’s trip was mostly about student exchanges, and for the former president to pay respects to the graves of his ancestors in China.

“The trip is to central China,we have not arranged to go to Beijing,” Hsiao said.

But he did not not rule out meetings with senior officials when asked if Ma might meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, although he added that they did not anticipate it.

“As guests,we are at our hosts’ disposal,” Hsiao said.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office noted that paying respects to ancestors was a “shared tradition” for people on either side of the straits and that student exchanges had the potential to “inject new energy into peaceful cross-Straits development”.

The visit comes amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait as Beijing ramps up pressure on Taiwan, which it considers part of its territory.Beijing considers Tsai Ing-wen,who succeeded Ma as president and was returned to office in a landslide in 2020, as a ‘separatist’ who wants the island’s independence.