Top Taiwan party official to head to China amid warming ties

TAIPEI, April 21 Kyodo

Taiwan's Nationalist Party Vice Chairman Chiang Pin-kun will go to China on a four-day visit starting Thursday in the latest sign of warming ties between traditional rivals Taipei and Beijing.

Chiang is chairman-designate of the Straits Exchange Foundation, Taiwan's semi-governmental body that negotiates with Beijing on behalf of Taipei on a range of cross-Taiwan Strait issues.

Nominally, Chiang's upcoming trip is an opportunity to thank China-based Taiwanese businesspeople, who returned to the island in droves to cast their ballots in the March 22 presidential election.

Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT, which is now the leading opposition party, won the election by a wide margin on the back of vows to improve business ties with China.

Appointed by Ma last week as SEF chairman, Chiang will visit five cities in China, including Shanghai, Xiamen and Shenzhen, to meet with Taiwanese businesspeople, the KMT announced in a press release Monday.

But Chiang, according to local media reports, is also likely to rub elbows with Chinese officials just weeks before he becomes SEF chairman, a post Ma last week called Taiwan's ''front-line'' official in managing ties with China.

The KMT-led government under Ma will be inaugurated May 20.

Chiang has remained tight-lipped on whether he would meet with Chinese officials amid local reports he would arrange a meeting in China between Chinese President Hu Jintao and KMT Chairman Wu Po-hsiung.

Chiang reportedly enjoys close contact with Chen Yunlin, who currently directs China's Taiwan Affairs Office, which oversees the mainland's ties with Taiwan.

Chen is slated to chair the Association for Relations Across the Straits, SEF's Chinese counterpart. The appointments would boil down direct, government-to-government cross-strait relations to the two men and their semi-official organizations.

SEF and ARATS fall under Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council and China's Taiwan Affairs Office, respectively, and exist to facilitate cross-strait exchanges in the absence of official ties.

If Chiang were to meet with Chinese officials, it would be the second time this month a KMT heavyweight slated to play a key role in the Ma administration went to China and met with top officials.

Vice President-elect Vincent Siew shook hands and held talks with Hu on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia, an economic summit for Asian political and business leaders, earlier this month. Siew and Chen hugged amid a welcome ceremony after the former arrived in China for the summit.

China and Taiwan appear to be rapidly thawing their historically frosty relations since Ma's victory.

China views the self-ruled island as part of its territory that must be eventually unified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Ma hopes to shelve cross-strait territorial issues and engineer a detente underpinned by greater economic integration between the old foes.

Cross-strait ties have remained rocky under the currently ruling Democratic Progressive Party-led government, which is known for pushing for formal sovereignty, moves that China has threatened war over.

As a curtain-raiser for the change of tack, Ma has promised direct, cross-strait charter flights every weekend by July, with daily flights materializing by next year.

Currently, China and Taiwan do not operate regular, direct air and shipping links.

Coordinating with Beijing on how to realize Ma's goals, as well as hammering out the details of achieving currency convertibility between China's yuan and the Taiwanese dollar in Taiwan and fully opening up the island to Chinese tourists, are likely on Chiang's agenda as his trip to China nears.

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