



Wang Yu-chi, who oversees the Taiwan’s China policy, arrived in Nanjing on Tuesday for a meeting with his Beijing counterpart, Zhang Zhijun, on the first day of a four-day trip, a Taiwanese official said.

The eastern Chinese city was the whole country’s capital when it was ruled by Wang’s nationalist Kuomintang party in the first half of the 20th century.

When the nationalists lost China’s civil war – which cost millions of lives – to Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949 two million supporters of the Kuomintang leader, Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China.

The island and the mainland have been governed separately ever since, both claiming to be the true government of China and only re-establishing contact in the 1990s through quasi-official organisations.

Tuesday’s meeting is the fruit of years of efforts to improve relations. But Beijing’s communist authorities still aim to reunite all of China under their rule and view Taiwan as a rebel region awaiting reunification with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Over the decades Taipei has become increasingly isolated diplomatically, losing the Chinese seat at the UN in 1971 and seeing the number of countries recognising it steadily whittled away, but it is supplied militarily by the United States and has enjoyed a long economic boom.

While no official agenda has been released for the talks – widely seen as a symbolic, confidence-building exercise – Taiwan’s Wang last month said they had “crucial implications for further institutionalisation of ties between the two sides”.

Taiwan is likely to focus on reaping practical outcomes from the discussions, such as securing economic benefits or security assurances, while China has one eye on long-term integration of the island, analysts say.

The political thaw comes after the two sides made cautious steps towards economic reconciliation in recent years. As the heirs of a pan-Chinese government Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang party accepts the One China principle and is opposed to seeking independence for the island.

Since 2008 when the party returned to power on the island President Ma Ying-jeou has overseen a marked softening in tone from Taipei towards its neighbour, restoring direct flights and other measures.

In June 2010 Taiwan and China signed the landmark Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement, a pact widely characterised as the boldest step yet towards reconciliation. But until now they had continued to shun all official contact, instead negotiating through proxies, such as the quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation representing Taiwan and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits for China.

