Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned Taiwan against moving towards “independence,” telling a visiting opposition politician from Taipei that Beijing wants to deepen cooperation with the island.

The remarks during the first visit by a leader of the mainland-friendly Kuomintang party in a decade pointed to China’s attempts to control the narrative over Taiwan — which it regards as a breakaway province — ahead of a visit to Beijing by US President Donald Trump next month.

Critics of the Taiwanese politician’s trip argue that the visit helps Beijing in a push to undermine the island’s stability; according to one Chinese writer in Foreign Policy, Xi and the KMT simply prize “a shared political foundation rather than… outside deterrence.”