Reuters
BEIJING - China pledged on Thursday to seize a rare opportunity for reconciliation with Taiwan and respect the desire of Taiwanese to be their own masters, a sign Beijing is in no hurry to bring the self-ruled island it claims as its own back to the fold.
Two days after Ma Ying-jeou became Taiwan's new president ending the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party's troubled eight-year rule, Chinese Minister of Taiwan Affairs Chen Yunlin said both sides were making "positive" efforts to resume negotiations.
China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since their split in 1949 when Mao Zedong's Red Army won the civil war and drove Chiang Kai-shek's defeated Nationalists troops fleeing to Taiwan.
After a brief period of detente in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin menaced Taiwan with war games from 1995-96, plunging bilateral relations to new lows.
Incumbent President Hu Jintao turned the tables in 2005 after inviting the island's opposition leaders to visit and exempting Taiwan fruit from import duties in a divide-and-rule gambit.
China's policy towards Taiwan changed from seeking to force Taipei to accept Beijing's unification terms to preventing the island from formally declaring independence under the DPP.
In an overture, Minister Chen said China and Taiwan faced a "rare and important opportunity" for reconciliation after Ma won the March presidential elections by a landslide.
China and Taiwan should "establish mutual trust, set aside disputes and differences and create a win-win" situation, Chen said in a statement carried by Xinhua news agency.