BEIJING, 30 April 2005 — Taiwan’s opposition leader and Chinese President Hu Jintao promised yesterday to work together to end hostilities between Taipei and Beijing, during the highest-level meeting between the two sides since they fought a civil war six decades ago.
The Taiwanese government criticized the talks, saying they would do nothing to improve frosty relations. The United States — which many fear could be drawn into any China-Taiwan conflict — stressed that dialogue should now involve Taiwan’s elected government. In a ceremony televised live in China and Taiwan, Hu and Nationalist Party Chairman Lien Chan smiled and shook hands in the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China’s legislature in central Beijing. Beijing and Taipei should focus on “peace, stability and development for the future,” Hu told Lien.
Lien responded: “We absolutely should avoid confrontation and collisions. What we want is conciliation. We want dialogue.”
Lien’s visit is the first by a Nationalist leader since the party, which once ruled all of China, fled the mainland following its defeat by the communists in 1949. The last meeting between the leaders of the nationalist Kuomintang and Communist parties was in 1945, when dictator Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong held talks in an attempt to create a national unity government. They failed, and after four years of war, the defeated Kuomintang fled to Taiwan.
The lavish welcome given to Lien was part of Chinese efforts to isolate Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, whose party favors formal independence for Taiwan — a step that Beijing says it would go to war to stop.
Lien favors unification, and Beijing appeared to be trying to encourage flagging pro-unification sentiment in Taiwan amid Chen’s campaign to promote a notion of the island as a distinct nation. Chen’s election in 2000 ended decades of Nationalist rule in Taiwan. Lien said he hoped his visit would help ease tensions. But the Taiwanese government said nothing had changed, noting that Lien had failed to persuade China to recognize the island’s sovereignty.
Lien “also did not persuade the Chinese communists to reduce their missile threat or their hostility toward Taiwan,” a statement said, referring to the estimated 600-700 ballistic missiles along the Chinese coast facing Taiwan, just 160 kilometers away.
Taiwan is a major potential flash point in Asia. Though the United States has no official ties with Taiwan, it is the island’s main arms supplier and could be drawn into any conflict. In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States hopes China will “move forward” toward dialogue with Taiwan’s President Chen.
