This week’s talks between the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait are aimed at building trust following decades of angry rhetoric and military tensions that made their relationship one of the world’s potential flash points.
The four days of meetings in Beijing starting on Thursday will be the first direct dialogue between the sides in more than a decade and have come about following a dramatic rapprochement between the long-time rivals in recent months.
Establishing permanent direct flights between China and Taiwan and allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan will be the main topics on the agenda.
Analysts from China and Taiwan agreed, however, that with mutual distrust and suspicion so entrenched, this week’s events are only the first step in a very long march towards a permanent thaw in ties.
“The upcoming talks are very symbolic. They signal there is an amicable atmosphere. It is quite positive,” said George Tsai (蔡瑋), a political science professor at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. “But we should be realistic. We should not have any illusions [about the difficulties ahead].”
Although the negotiations will resume, they will still only be held between semi-official bodies, as there are no direct government-to-government relations.
The decision to focus on tourism and direct travel was made deliberately, analysts said.
Both sides made it clear that more difficult topics, such as political issues and China’s military build-up, would be kept off the negotiating table as they sought to lay the difficult foundations for greater trust and understanding.
“The conditions for talks on political issues are not ready yet,” said Li Peng (李鵬), the deputy director of the Taiwan Research Institute at China’s Xiamen University. “The upcoming talks will follow the principle of easy tasks first, difficult tasks later, so that means economic issues first, political issues later.”
Since the Chinese Nationalist Party returned to power last month, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has taken a conciliatory approach to China. Ma has pledged to deepen economic links between the two sides and vowed not to enter an arms race with China.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) also said the nation would no longer try to lure allies away from recognizing China, as it hopes to reach a truce with Beijing over international space.
Amid this backdrop, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) late last month met KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) in Beijing — the highest-level contact between the two sides since the Chinese Civil War — and agreed to resume the talks.
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