Cross-Strait meeting breeds optimism

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Unimaginable meeting

In his speech at the meeting, Wang described his meeting with Zhang as "an unimaginable occasion in earlier years."

"Being able to sit down and talk is really valuable, considering that the two sides were once almost at war," he said in the address.

Zhang agreed that such a meeting would have been impossible earlier and called for "a little more imagination" in cross-Strait relations.

Zhang Zhijun (3rd R), head of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, meets with Wang Yu-chi (4th L), Taiwan's mainland affairs chief, in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, Feb. 11, 2014. The Chinese mainland and Taiwan's chief officials in charge of cross-Strait affairs met here on Feb. 11 afternoon for the first time since 1949. [Xinhua photo]

Relations between the mainland and Taiwan stalled when the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan in 1949 after being defeated in a civil war.

Business and personnel exchanges resumed in the late 1980s, and in the early 1990s the two sides started to engage with each other through the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, and its Taiwan counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation.

The ARATS and SEF are non-governmental organizations founded in 1991 and 1990 respectively.

ARATS-SEF talks have speeded up since 2008 and produced a number of important agreements, including lifting the bans on direct shipping, air transport and postal services in 2008, and the long-awaited Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement in 2010.

The meeting between Zhang and Wang is an important breakthrough and may lead to regular visits. The two first met informally on the sidelines of the economic leaders' meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Bali, Indonesia last October, when they agreed to mutual visits.

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