On Wednesday, 10 April, former Taiwan President Ma Motel-jeou (2008-2016) toured China for eleven days with a group of young people from her career and interviewed President Xi Jinping and Secretary General of the Communist Party in Beijing. In 2015, when Ma was still president of Taiwan, the commentators recalled the precedent of the meeting they both held in Singapore, but adding that the Taiwanese is now a “private gentleman”. To dilute the importance.

Well, one thing to bear in mind would be that three members of the Communist Party of China’s Politburu Standing Committee (i.e. seven of the country’s most powerful men, all men) never meet with a private individual unless it is very special. It will have to be concluded that the meeting was not protocolous, given that they are Xi (the Supreme), Wang Huning (the fourth hierarchical superior, the head of the Advisory Conference and the regime thinker) and Cai Qi (the head of the party organization). And it is more understandable, in this way, that the delegation in which China's top official in relation to Taiwan met at the moment was the fourth.

Although the content made known by official media (for) is stereotyped, the encounter suggests profound changes, or at least nuances. Ma, even though he is today a “private gentleman”, far older (about to turn 74), without official charge, and that Kuomintang (KMT) is also outside the leadership of his party, remains a major asset in Taiwan’s politics. He is also the safest referee of the KMT who does not find its heirs. Meanwhile, the DPP government is increasingly uncomfortable trapped between pressures from Washington and Beijing.

Wang Huning’s sitting position on the other side of the table, on the other hand, quite clearly indicates that the Chinese Communist Party would be willing to offer, along with the stick of permanent military manoeuvres, political carrots for Taiwan to join. Or, at least, to demand independence and not to start the conflict. Wang has forcefully recovered the “Unified Front” that had been forgotten for decades and for which he might be suspected to be in the current position.

It should be remembered that the original Unified Front was the one that enabled the “Agreement of two Ten” between Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Could it now have better performance?