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China, Taiwan in milestone talks at APEC
China said on Sunday that it was open to a visit by Taiwans top cross-strait official as it called for a political settlement to prevent their differences being handed down from generation to generation.Chinese President Xi Jinping met Vincent Siew, Taiwans former vice president, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Indonesia. They shook hands and smiled for the cameras. Xi emphasised that both sides should keep pushing for a political settlement to their longstanding division, and that they should see themselves as one family, Chinas Xinhua news agency said. The Chinese communist supremo said we cannot hand those problems down from generation to generation, it reported. Siew, the special envoy to APEC of Taiwans business-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou, told reporters that he and Xi discussed mainly economic and trade issues during their 30-minute meeting. Ma, while pushing through a startling transformation in the business climate across the Taiwan Strait, has been more resistant to opening up a political front to the rapprochement. But Taiwan played up the symbolic import of a separate encounter in Bali between Wang Yuqi, its top official on mainland affairs, and his Beijing counterpart, Zhang Zhijun. The meeting was the first such political encounter between the heads of the respective cross-strait bodies, the islands government said. Taiwans Mainland Affairs Council described the meeting as the good start of a normalised official interaction between the two sides, stressing that Zhang had referred to Wang by the Taiwan officials formal title of chairman. It showed that the two sides respect each other and have adopted a more pragmatical attitude, the Council said in a statement. According to Xinhua, Chinas Zhang said that he welcomed Wang to visit the mainland at a proper time. It did not go into further detail. President Ma himself was not at APEC. Taiwans leaders are barred from the groupings summits due to objections from China, which claims sovereignty over the island, and are represented instead by senior economic advisers or business leaders such as Siew. Posted by: Steve White 2013-10-07 |
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