Hu Jintao meets Taiwan's KMT head
Beijing (AsiaNews) - Chinese president Hu Jintao met this afternoon with Wu Poh-hsiung, head of the Kuomintang, the governing party in Taiwan, in what has been described as an historic encounter marking a new chapter in relations between the People's Republic of China and the population of the island. Today's meeting was the highest level encounter between the two powers of the Strait since 1949.
Hu participated in the meeting under his title as secretary general of the Chinese communist party. The meeting took place in the Great Hall of the People; the two delegations were seated at two tables placed facing each other, as a symbol of friendship and equal dignity.
Hu expressed the hope that relations between the two sides of the Strait can continue to increase, so that "China and Taiwan can face the future together, jointly work for peaceful development".
Hu also thanked his Taiwanese "compatriots" for their solidarity with the victims of the earthquake in Sichuan, expressed with donations and the sending of rescue teams to the places struck by the quake.
The thaw comes following the electoral victory of new Taiwanese president Ma ying-jeou, also of the KMT, who immediately following his election expressed greater openness to dialogue and greater pragmatism toward China.
In the recent talks, Wu placed on the agenda the project of future direct flights between China and Taiwan, and permission to increase the number of Chinese tourists on the island.
China and Taiwan have been divided since 1949, when Mao Zedong took power and the leader of the KMT fled to the island. Since then, Beijing has always wanted to bring the "rebel" island back into the fold of the mainland. In recent years, there have also been threats of military operations if Taiwan should declare independence. Meanwhile, China is pointing at least 1,000 missiles toward Taiwan.
Taiwan is the greatest economic investor in China, and some of the regions facing the Strait (Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong) revolve around the island's economy.
In the days preceding Wu's visit, China and Taiwan said they were ready to resume dialogue, interrupted at the end of the 1990's, on the basis of the "one China" principle. A few months ago, Hu Jintao admitted that this principle could be interpreted in different ways. China, in fact, thinks that Taiwan should be reintegrated with the mainland; Taiwan sees things "differently". Previously, Beijing had not admitted that there might be different interpretations of this principle.
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