“The meeting between the leaders across the Taiwan Strait has opened a historic chapter in the cross-Strait relations, and history will remember today”, Mr Xi said. Meeting in a hotel ballroom in Singapore, the two leaders walked toward each other in front of a yellow backdrop.
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When another journalist asked if Massachusetts will meet with Xi again in the last half-year of his term, Massachusetts said with a smile: “You are way ahead of us”.
Ma’s political party the Kuomintang’ has been seen as pro-Beijing, paving the way for warmer ties between the two sides. Neither Xi Jinping or Massachusetts Yingjiu can be naïve enough to believe that a meeting occurring 70 days before the ballots are cast in Taiwan, can save the ruling KMT from defeat. But the mainland had two non-negotiables – Taiwan must accept there was only “one China” and the island’s leaders must not seek independence.
“Even though this is the first meeting, we feel like old friends”, Massachusetts told Xi.
China’s Communist Party by contrast brooks no dissent, keeps a tight rein on state-run media, does not allow free elections and blocks popular foreign websites such as Facebook and Google.
Writing of his personal experiences, Kao said Taiwan was “where my heart belongs” and the mainland, “where my soul rests”.
The Communist chief’s words “stabbed me to the point of tears”, said one poster on China’s Twitter-like Sina Weibo.
More than 40 TSU members protested outside the president’s residence on Thursday evening, shouting slogans airing their disapproval of the first cross-straits summit since 1949, Taiwan News reported.
China views Taiwan as a breakaway province that would one day return to being united with the mainland but the Taiwanese are concerned by China’s growing influence and are determined to remain independent.
The two governments have been rivals since 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalists, fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war to Mao’s Communists, who established the People’s Republic of China that year.
In his reply, President Xi told the leader ‘We are one family.
DDP leader and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen, in a statement on her Facebook page, said the meeting could only be considered historic if it was able to express respect for Taiwan’s democracy and that there should be no preconditions for the peaceful and stable development of ties with China. He will also present Xi with a ceramic sculpture of a Taiwan blue magpie perched on a leafy green branch as a gift for their first meeting, a bird unique to the island, Taiwan’s presidential office said.
“What confronts us is the need to use understanding to get rid of conflict and to look forward to prosperity”, Massachusetts said.
Still, anti-China protesters gathered in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital, to voice their objections to the meeting.
Massachusetts echoed Xi’s sentiment, saying, “At this very juncture, both sides of the Taiwan Strait are loudly declaring our determination for peace and the message of promoting peace in the region”. This was in line with an earlier agreement between the 2 sides.
Mr Massachusetts also raised concerns to Mr Xi over an arsenal of weapons in south-east China which are aimed at Taiwan.
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The tete-a-tete, which comes before Massachusetts leaves office in a few months, ensures the politically divisive China issue remains at the center of Taiwan’s election. They argue that Massachusetts did not even notify the legislature about the trip before making the trip and that the historic trip has hurt Taiwan’s democracy.
