Look for a serious change in China’s policy toward Taiwan: That’s the thinking behind reports that a veteran Chinese Communist Party strategist is in line to take over the prickly topic of Beijing’s dealings with the independent island province. 

President Xi is reported to have selected Wang Huning, who survived a shakeup of party leadership and now is tasked with answering the burning question: What do you do with a problem like Taiwan?

It’s not clear whether Mr. Xi, on the expert advice of Mr. Wang, is going to look for compromise of some sort or will want to adopt a tough policy of sticks and carrots — mingling threats with enticements.

“Many hope Beijing’s new policy envisioned by Wang will prioritize communication and cooperation over aggression and exclusion,” the English-language Taiwan News, reporting from Taipei, said. If Beijing wants to pursue a diplomatic course with Taiwan rather than continue on its path of persistent military provocation, the paper said, “then it will be incumbent on the CCP to outline such a policy course in the near future.”

If that note of optimism is at all correct, then presumably Beijing would scale down its military exercises in which Chinese planes have almost routinely flown into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification zone. In some cases, planes and naval vessels have even intruded into Taiwan’s territorial waters.

A sign of Mr. Wang’s influence is that he retained his position on the politburo’s standing committee while two other members, including Premier Li Keqiang, who is ranked just above him, lost out in the party shakeup three months ago.

The thinking is that Mr. Wang will ditch the “one country, two systems” concept dating from the era when the late Deng Hsiao Ping crafted a pragmatic, reconciliatory policy for dealing with both Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Mr. Xi has already forsaken that policy in Hong Kong after mass demonstrations shook up the former British colony, and he may be planning to do the same for Taiwan, which has pursued an independence course ever since the victory of Mao’s Red Army on the mainland in 1949.

That does not mean, though, that Mr. Wang will want to suggest a really hard line, to the point of invasion of Taiwan, with which the mainland maintains extensive trade relations.

The English-language offshoot of Japan’s financial paper Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei, quoted a “knowledgeable” source as saying Mr. Wang’s first task would be to “launch a new theory that will replace Deng’s one country, two systems.” Then, based on this rather abstract theory, “pressure will be put on Taiwan based on it.”

That kind of hard-headed, but not really hawkish, outlook has been a hallmark of Mr. Wang’s survival through the ups and downs of three top Chinese leaders.

Mr. Wang “is already a core member of the Politburo Standing Committee and could rise up the order as many other faces change,” according to the South China Morning Post at Hong Kong. “The theorist is one of the architects of Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese dream’ concept.” 

The newspaper described Mr. Wang as “a rare veteran in Xi’s new core team as the president brings in fresh blood for his rule for the next five years and beyond.”