Xi to meet Kuomintang chief next month, says party

TAIPEI — Chinese President and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping will hold talks with the chairman of Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang (KMT) in Beijing next month, the KMT said yesterday, as the former bitter enemies continue their two decade-old rapprochement.

Mr Eric Chu (picture), a likely candidate for the island’s presidency in next year’s election, will lead a party delegation to attend a forum on relations across the Taiwan Strait in Shanghai on May 3. Taiwan’s Central News Agency said Mr Chu will hold talks with Mr Xi in Beijing the following day.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei confirmed Mr Chu would visit Beijing after Shanghai, but did not say if Mr Xi will hold talks with Mr Chu. “This is an important, high-level exchange between the two parties,” said Mr Hong, citing a statement from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.

KMT under Chiang Kai-shek were driven to Taiwan by Mao Zedong’s Communists during a civil war in 1949, leading to decades of hostility between the sides. Relations began to warm in the 1990s, partly out of their common opposition to Taiwan’s formal independence from China, a position advocated by the self-governing island republic’s main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Improved ties led to a 2005 meeting between then-party leaders Lien Chan and Hu Jintao in Beijing.

Elected to the party post in January, Mr Chu would be the third KMT chairman to visit China and the first since 2008.

Business ties between Taiwan and China have improved to their best level in six decades since Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008. But both sides remain political rivals, with China viewing the democratic island as a renegade province.

Taiwan’s pride in its democracy helps reinforce the unwillingness of many to be absorbed politically by China, which has not ruled out force to ensure unification.

Thousands of young people occupied Taiwan’s Parliament in March last year in an unprecedented protest against a planned trade pact calling for closer ties with Beijing.

Mr Chu, currently the Mayor of New Taipei City, took the reins of the KMT after it suffered a heavy setback in local elections last November. The trip to China is expected to bolster his influence. He has said repeatedly he will not join the presidential election race later this year, but he remains the most promising candidate to rival the candidate of the DPP. AGENCIES