Leader of Taiwan's opposition Kuomintang (KMT), elected as the party's chairwoman in October 2025. She is 56 years old.
She began her career as a student activist in the 1990s, seeking independence for Taiwan and castigating the KMT, then the ruling party. She then stunned colleagues by joining the KMT in 2005, disillusioned by what she saw as corruption and intolerance of dissent within the DPP's ranks. Her father was a soldier in the Nationalist army that fled to Taiwan from the mainland in 1949. She quickly earned a reputation as a combative public speaker within the KMT.
Ms Cheng believes Taiwan's security should be achieved through a combination of "reasonable" military spending and negotiations with Xi Jinping. She has said "the most important task of my tenure is to advance peace across the Taiwan Strait." After a nine-year hiatus, she announced the KMT would resume dialogue with China's Communist Party in early February 2026, starting with think-tank exchanges. She hopes to visit China in the first half of 2026 to meet Mr Xi, who sent her a congratulatory telegram after her election expressing hope that they could work together towards unification.
She argues that if the DPP wins the 2028 presidential election, China's leadership could lose hope of peacefully unifying Taiwan with the mainland. She also contends that American support for Taiwan is wavering, citing Trump's demands that Taiwan increase defence spending to 10% of GDP and shift 40% of its semiconductor industry to America. She says embracing the 1992 consensus—which stipulates both sides of the Taiwan Strait are part of "one China", while allowing for different interpretations—"would significantly reduce the likelihood of military confrontation".
She has only recently become more outspoken about her own sense of Chinese identity. She says she hopes to secure an explicit public commitment from Xi that both sides should work to maintain peace.
In April 2026 Ms Cheng made a six-day visit to China—the first by a KMT leader in a decade. On April 10th she met Xi Jinping in Beijing. Both expressed opposition to Taiwan's independence and pledged to maintain peace across the Taiwan Strait and enhance economic exchanges. Ms Cheng said she hoped to host Mr Xi on a visit to Taiwan if the KMT returned to power.
She said Mr Xi reacted positively to her proposal for a formal "peace framework" and her requests for China to facilitate Taiwan's participation in international bodies and trade deals. She re-affirmed the KMT's commitment to the 1992 consensus, described Taiwanese people as part of the Chinese nation, and blamed Japan—which ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945—for splitting Taiwan from the mainland. Those remarks upset many Taiwanese who see themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese and who assert the island was never fully part of the Chinese empire.
Ms Cheng pledged to work towards "national rejuvenation", citing the wishes of Sun Yat-sen, but stopped short of echoing Mr Xi's call for unification. Her choice of words appeared calibrated to keep Mr Xi engaged while avoiding a bigger backlash in Taiwan. Critics fear mainland authorities will exploit her comments in propaganda and diplomacy. The visit deepened American doubts about Ms Cheng, who is blocking the government's proposed increase in defence spending.
Ms Cheng's Beijing trip widened a rift with a rival KMT faction that leans closer to America. Lu Shiow-yen, mayor of Taichung and a front-runner for the KMT's 2028 presidential nomination, visited America in March and spent much of her time convincing American politicians the KMT was not opposed to increasing military spending. On March 30th Ms Lu suggested a sum between $25bn and $31bn, much closer to the $40bn proposed by the DPP than the KMT's earlier call for about $12bn. The tussle is seen as part of the broader struggle between the China-leaning and America-leaning KMT factions.
Under Ms Cheng's leadership, the KMT and its allies—which together hold a majority in parliament—have blocked President Lai Ching-te's plans to increase military spending to 5% of GDP by 2030, as well as a proposed $40bn supplementary defence budget for American weapons. She declines to specify how much Taiwan should spend on defence but says it can never match China's firepower.
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