BEIJING, Jan. 28 -- The Chinese leadership signaled a slight softening of its policies toward Taiwan on Friday, offering to open talks with any Taiwanese leader "regardless of his past rhetoric and actions." It also pledged to work through informal channels if necessary to lift trade barriers and open direct transport and postal links with the island.
In what officials described as a major address that represented the thinking of the government of President Hu Jintao, a senior Communist Party official repeated Beijing's long-standing demand that Taiwan agree that it and the mainland belong to "one China" before formal cross-strait negotiations could resume.
But the speaker, Jia Qinglin, a member of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, also suggested that the government was willing to end its hostility toward President Chen Shui-bian if he abandons his campaign to promote Taiwan's independence.
"We are open on whom to negotiate with and what to negotiate," Jia said, according to a text of the address issued by the official New China News Agency. "We have no bias against any particular person." Jia's speech appeared to mark a change in tactics by the Chinese leadership after months of military threats and condemnations of the Taiwanese president. Party officials said the leadership concluded after the defeat of Chen's pro-independence party in legislative elections last month that it could afford to adopt a more conciliatory approach aimed at further undermining support for his independence-oriented policies.
Jia's remarks came a day before the first nonstop commercial flights between the mainland and Taiwan in more than half a century were to take place.
Briefing reporters on Jia's address, a senior Taiwan affairs official said China was willing to use similar informal channels to address a wide range of issues, including lifting trade barriers that limit the sale of Taiwanese agricultural products to China.
The official, Maj. Gen. Wang Zaixi, also said the recent negotiations on cross-strait flights during the Lunar New Year holidays "provide a good model and create good conditions" for establishing direct trade, transport and postal ties.
But Wang said any talks with Chen's government would be difficult unless it stopped its "Taiwan independence activities." He singled out Chen's efforts to overhaul the island's constitution. Officials in Beijing are concerned that changes to the constitution could provide a basis for Chen's claim of Taiwanese sovereignty.
"The most pressing task at this moment is to stop the Taiwan independence activities," Wang said, suggesting that the new leadership would be willing to let Taiwan continue governing itself as long as necessary. "When conditions are more appropriate, we may start a discussion on how to achieve peaceful reunification between the two sides."
