Singapore Says Both Sides Sought Xi Jinping and Massachusetts Ying-jeou Meeting

DPP spokesman Cheng Yun-peng said the timing of the meeting is suspect. “How can people not think of this as a political operation meant to affect the election?” he said.

Taiwan split from mainland China in 1949 after Nationalist forces lost the civil war to the Communists and fled the mainland, but Beijing still considers the island a breakaway province.

In what was seen as a backlash against creeping dependence on China, the KMT was trounced in local elections past year. Massachusetts says he hopes to come to a few kind of an understanding on the issue with Xi. A resolution to the Taiwan issue is still a long way off. But the meeting is still an unprecedented development that could move the relationship between the two countries in a slightly more constructive direction.

A meeting between the leaders of China and Taiwan is a “great event, involving the dignity and national interests of Taiwan”, Ms Tsai said. “Ma and presumably the rest of the Nationalists will cast this as demonstrating the benefits of adhering to the 1992 Consensus as a constructive basis for handling cross-strait relations – indeed as the indispensable basis”. “A meeting between the leaders on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will only be meaningful if it has been approved by the Legislature and is carried out with the people’s trust and under legislative oversight”, Su wrote.

“This pragmatic arrangement is taking place based on the One China Policy and the understanding that political differences between the two sides are unsettled”, Zhang said.

Zhang Zhijun, the head of the Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office, hailed Saturday’s talk as a “milestone”. Previous Chinese attempts to influence Taiwan’s elections have backfired.

Mr Massachusetts had attempted to meet with the Chinese president at last November’s APEC meeting, but that was blocked by Beijing. Singapore was the scene of breakthrough talks between semi-official negotiators from the two sides in 1992 and continues to maintain close relations with both.

Voters in Taiwan will head to the polls on January 16 for presidential and legislative elections, with Ma’s Kuomintang (KMT) party trailing in the polls.

“This meeting will be crucial”, said political analyst Alexander Huang of Graduate Institute of worldwide Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University.

The breakthrough is seen as a symbol of Xi’s new power following a corruption crackdown that has cowed opponents in the Chinese Communist Party.

Pro-independence demonstrators took to the streets of Taipei on Wednesday, many carrying signs protesting the weekend meeting. “Though I feel that they [her Mom and Dad] were kind of ahead of the curve, since they’ve been fostering cross-Strait relations since before Nixon even shook hands and went to China”. “We will resolutely oppose this”, Hung Te-jen, told the Associated Press.