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Taiwan opposition party delegation visits China+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)BEIJING, March 22_(Kyodo) _ A delegation from Taiwan's opposition Nationalist Party met with Chinese officials in Beijing on Wednesday to discuss economic exchanges. The six-member delegation, led by its former party Secretary General Lin Fengzheng, met at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse with Chen Yunlin, director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, to discuss plans to hold a cross-strait trade and commerce symposium on April 14-15 in Beijing, a party spokesman said. The symposium will include around 100 people invited from Taiwan and perhaps an equal number from China, and the speakers will include Jia Qinglin, chairman of China's People's Political Consultative Conference, according to spokesman Chang Jung-kung. He said it is being organized in response to calls from Taiwan business people for more opportunities in China. The Nationalist Party delegation's visit is part of a series of exchanges with Beijing in the wake of last year's historic, ice-breaking visit by Lien Chen, the party's then chairman, who met with Chinese President and Communist Party leader Hu Jintao. Lien's visit marked the first contact between leaders of the two parties since the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan after a civil war that ended in 1949. They reached a consensus that China and Taiwan should avoid military confrontations and seek reconciliation through dialogue between leaders across the strait. The Chinese government and the Nationalist Party, which ruled Taiwan for five decades prior to 2000, are erstwhile enemies that now share opposition to independence-leaning Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party. The delegation arrived in China earlier Wednesday and is due to leave Thursday. The visit takes place as Nationalist Party Chairman Ma Ying-jeou is on a trip to the United States that comes in the wake of a diplomatic storm triggered by Chen's controversial scrapping of a symbolic committee that was set up during the period of Nationalist Party rule to study eventual unification with the mainland. |