“…The leader of Taiwan’s new ruling party arrived in China on Monday with promises to seek peace and economic engagement on a trip that includes a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao…”

Source: AP

The leader of Taiwan’s new ruling party arrived in China on Monday with promises to seek peace and economic engagement on a trip that includes a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of the Nationalist Party, was making the six-day trip at China’s invitation. It was the first mainland visit by the head of a ruling Taiwanese party.

The trip came less than a week after Nationalist Ma Ying-jeou took office as Taiwan’s president.

In the last century the Nationalists fought a bloody civil war with the Chinese communists on the mainland. The Nationalists’ defeated forces fled in 1949 and settled on Taiwan, separated by a 100-mile-wide strait. China still claims the island and has threatened war if the island moves toward formal independence.

“We hope this will be the beginning of a new era, when we can reconcile, be together harmoniously and jointly strive for peace,” Wu told reporters at China’s Nanjing airport.

“There will be many difficulties ahead of us, but we are confident we can achieve peace as long as we remain sincere in dealing with them,” he said.

Chen Yunlin, head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Council, bowed to the Nationalist delegation as he expressed his gratitude for Taiwanese donations and relief efforts for victims of the recent mainland earthquake.

“People across the Strait are feeling the spring breeze … following eight years of dark clouds,” he said in an apparent reference to the recently ended rule of Taiwan’s pro-independence President Chen Shui-bian.

Wu was scheduled to visit Beijing, where he was to meet Hu, and the commercial center of Shanghai, home to tens of thousands of Taiwanese business people.

The ice between the sides was first broken in 2005 when then-Chairman Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party - the biggest opposition party at the time - made a historic visit to China.

Relations have warmed further since Ma was elected president in March.

Ma has promised to seek economic engagement with China and to end nearly six decades of hostility, a platform that played well with voters following eight years of ex-president Chen’s confrontational approach.

China demands eventual unification with the currently self-governed island.

Ma has urged Wu to tell the Chinese government to quickly sanction expanded tourism to Taiwan, as well as weekend charter flights. But he made it clear that Wu must not discuss the thorny issue of Taiwan’s sovereign status or unification.

Most Taiwanese reject unification, fearing it would deprive them of their freedoms and compromise their economic prosperity.