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Taiwan Nationalist Cites 'Consensus' With Chinese on Ending Hostilities
Chinese President Hu Jintao, right, meets with Taiwanese opposition leader Lien Chan, the first Nationalist Party figure to visit the mainland since 1949.
(By Claro Cortes Iv -- Reuters)
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Recent public opinion polls in Taiwan have shown that a majority of people approved of Lien's visit and the prospect of improved relations with China. Still, Lien and his party face the risk that Chen and Taiwan independence activists could paint his visit as a sign that he has compromised the island's sovereignty for political gain.
"It's a democratic society," Lien said, dismissing such concerns. "You've got to have voices from different perspectives."
The communique he struck with China reaffirms a 1992 agreement between the two sides that they both acknowledge that the mainland and Taiwan are part of "one China," while agreeing to disagree about what that means. That understanding disintegrated in 1999, as then-President Lee Teng-hui characterized his dealings with China as "a special state-to-state relationship." Relations have been at a stalemate since then.
Lien described his journey here as personal as much as political. He spent his first eight years in mainland China before his father, a Nationalist official, took him back to his native Taiwan at the end of World War II as the vanquished Japanese surrendered the island. Once the Communists took power, the Taiwan-mainland divide was sealed. On his visit to Xian, Lien visited the tomb of his grandmother for the first time in 60 years, voicing an apology to her for the long absence. He spoke in both the Taiwanese dialect and Mandarin, the Chinese national language.
In Beijing, he said he was touched by a personal overture from Hu, who gave him letters that Lien's father had sent to the Nationalist government in Nanjing in 1914 seeking official Chinese citizenship at a time when Taiwan was separated from China and ruled by Japan.
Lien's visit to Shanghai may have presented the most vivid reminder of how much has changed. On Monday, he met with one of China's principal negotiators with Taiwan, Wang Daohan, inside the old Jinjiang Hotel, a marble-and-brick building where in 1972 President Richard M. Nixon signed the Shanghai Communique, setting in motion the process under which the United States transferred diplomatic recognition of China from the Nationalists on Taiwan to the Communists in Beijing.
Six decades had passed since Lien lived in Shanghai. In those days, the city was confined to the west bank of the Huangpu River, while the east bank, Pudong, was a muddy fishing village. Today, Pudong is the center of the city's financial district, a riot of soaring towers of glass and steel. This was the scene visible from the 28th-story hotel suite in which Lien sat for the interview.
He did not, however, show much interest in the past. "History is history, and you can do nothing about it," he said. "But the future is something that you can do something about."
