China's top negotiator on Taiwan affairs began a historic trip today to the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own to talk trade and transit as the opposition planned protests against warming ties.
Chen Yunlin, the highest-level Chinese official to land on the island in decades, is due to sign agreements on cargo shipments, direct flights and global financial cooperation.
The two sides are also expected to discuss direct postal links and a framework for ensuring food safety in light of China's tainted milk powder scandal.
"The hard ice between the two sides has already been shattered, the road has already been opened," said Wang Yi, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, at Chen's official send-off in Beijing.
"This will go down as a great event in the history of relations across the (Taiwan) Straits."
Communist China has claimed sovereignty over democratic Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong's forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek's KMT fled to Taiwan. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.
But since China-friendly Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou took office in May, relations have thawed with a series of trade and transit deals, including permission for as many as 3,000 Chinese tourists to visit the once largely forbidden island per day.
Chen's visit is a further landmark, although he said last week that talks between the diplomatic rivals will avoid sensitive political issues to focus on economic cooperation.
Permanent UN Security Council member China is recognized by about 170 countries, including the world's most powerful. Taiwan is recognized by just 23, mostly small, impoverished nations in Africa, Latin America and the South Pacific.
Chen, traveling with a delegation of 60 people, was whisked from the airport, patrolled by shield-wielding police, to a hillside negotiation venue where 1,000 police stood guard.
Before Chen's arrival, protesters in central Taipei displayed his super-sized effigy and held banners telling him to go back to China. Police at the airport and the hotel talks venue scuffled with isolated activists and made two hotel guests remove a banner from their balcony calling Chen a "bandit."
Taiwan's main opposition party, concerned that Taiwan is getting too close to China, says it will begin a three-day protest sit-in outside the parliament building in Taipei later today and expand the demonstration on Thursday.
Earlier this month, demonstrators in the southern Taiwan city of Tainan pushed a visiting Chinese official to the ground, outraging Beijing.
Taiwan's markets reacted positively to the visit in early trade today, with the tourism stock sub-index up more than 5 per cent and the Taiwan dollar stronger on sentiment.
Reuters