Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of the Kuomintang, and Hu Jintao, general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, shook hands during a red carpet welcome at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with the event broadcast on mainland China's state-controlled television.
In his opening remarks to the meeting, Hu said that he hoped to promote relations between the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang. "I look forward to the future and pushing for the peaceful development of cross-strait relations."
Wu responded that the two peoples should never take up arms against each other again and added that Sichuan quake showed "we can work together to free our countrymen from war."
Wu's six-day trip came after Hu invited the KMT chief to visit the mainland earlier this month. At a send-off for the KMT boss, which was attended by President Ma Ying-jeou, Vice President Vincent Siew, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan and other KMT heavyweights, Wu said he would approach his meeting with Hu by "neither cringing nor being arrogant."
"I hope my trip will help build sound interactions across the Taiwan Strait and implement the KMT's mainland China policies," Wu said. "This will help make President Ma's campaign promises a reality."
Arriving May 26 in Nanjing, the capital of eastern China's Jiangsu Province via Hong Kong, the 16-member delegation was met by Chen Yunlin, director of the Taiwan Work Office of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. The flight into mainland China passed via Hong Kong because of the long-standing absence of direct air links across the Taiwan Strait.
Speaking at the airport, Wu expressed hope that the two sides would set aside disputes, shelve differences and create a win-win situation on the basis of the "1992 Consensus." "There will be many difficulties ahead of us, but we are confident of achieving peace as long as we remain sincere in our dealings," he said.
A visit to the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the Republic of China's founding father, May 27 followed before the delegation proceeded to Beijing for Wu's talks with Hu. The group left Beijing for Shanghai May 29 to meet with city and party officials, as well as top executives of leading Taiwan businesses in China.
The Wu-Hu meeting will mark the first formal contact between the leaders of the ruling parties on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait since the ROC government relocated to Taiwan in 1949.
Semi-official dialogue between the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation and the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits has been suspended since 1999 when then-President Lee Teng-hui defined cross-strait relations as a "special state-to-state relationship."
These remained frozen during the eight-year rule of the Democratic Progressive Party, as former President Chen Shui-bian had consistently rejected Beijing's condition that he should first accept its "one-China" principle under which Taiwan is defined as part of China.
The deadlock was broken when Lien Chan, then-chairman of the KMT, visited the mainland in 2005. The KMT's team signed a "10-point consensus" with the CCP that primarily focused on practical issues relating to agriculture and business.
Relations between Taiwan and China seemed to thaw in April when Siew met Hu on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia on the island of Hainan in southern China.
According to Ma, the institutionalized contact between the SEF and the ARATS would remain the primary channel for future communication between Taiwan and the mainland. The president also said he viewed the KMT-CCP platform as being a secondary channel that would help primary channel's operation.
However, William Lai--the DPP legislative caucus whip--said his party opposes the so-called "secondary channel" that the KMT administration is using to direct its mainland China policy.
Lai and other critics of the Lien-Hu meeting and Wu-Hu talks contend that this approach gives the mainland an opportunity to create political divisions on Taiwan by emphasizing party-to-party talks rather than government-to-government negotiations.
Senior KMT officials expressed optimism over Wu's trip, expecting the visit to hasten the resumption of semi-official contact across the Taiwan Strait. It is hoped that Wu's meeting with Hu will pave the way for new SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung to visit China in June for negotiations regarding cross-strait weekend charter flights and increasing the number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan.
Write to Tso Londi at londi@mail.gio.gov.tw