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BEIJING: China and Taiwan will this week hold historic talks aimed at building trust following decades of angry rhetoric and military tensions that made their relationship one of the world's potential flashpoints.
The four days of meetings in Beijing starting on Wednesday will be the first direct dialogue between the rivals in over a decade and have come about thanks to a dramatic rapprochement between the long-time rivals in recent months.
Establishing permanent direct flights between China and Taiwan and allowing more mainland Chinese tourists to visit the island will be the main topics on the agenda.
However analysts from China and Taiwan agreed that, with mutual distrust and suspicion so entrenched, this week's events were only the first step in a very long march towards a permanent thaw in ties.
"The upcoming talks are very symbolic. They signal there is an amicable atmosphere. It is quite positive," said George Tsai, a political science professor at Chinese Culture University in Taipei.
"But we should be realistic. We should not have any illusions (about the difficulties ahead)."
China and Taiwan split at the end of a civil war in 1949 and their rivalry has since proven to be one of the most enduring threats to regional and global stability.
Both sides have spent billions of dollars preparing for another war against each other, with China insistent that it will eventually bring the island back into its political fold, by force if necessary.
Communist China has regularly railed at the United States for lending democratic Taiwan support in its military defence.
That issue has been one of the greatest claws in the relationship between China and the United States.
China ratcheted up its threats of war during the eight years that Chen Shui-bian was president of Taiwan, as he and his Democratic Progressive Party sought to push the island closer towards independence.
But the DPP was swept from power in presidential polls in March, with the Kuomintang party led by Ma Ying-jeou winning the election partly on its promise of a much more conciliatory approach to China.
Ma, who was sworn in last month, has pledged to deepen economic links between the two sides and vowed not to enter an arms race with China.
Taiwan's new foreign minister, Francisco Ou, also said the island would no longer try to lure countries away from recognising China, signalling a truce by Taipei in its costly contest for diplomatic alliances around the world.
Amid this backdrop, Chinese President Hu Jintao late last month met the head of the Kuomintang, Wu Poh-hsiung in Beijing -- the highest-level contact between the two sides since 1949 -- and agreed to resume the talks.
Those talks had themselves become a symbol of the stand-off between China and Taiwan.
The framework for them was first reached in 1992 but were held just once, the following year, then suspended by the Chinese government.
And even though the talks will resume, they will still only be held between two semi-official bodies as there are no direct government-to-government relations.
The decision to focus on tourism and direct travel was made deliberately, according to analysts.
Both sides made it clear more difficult topics, such as political issues and China's military build-up, would be kept off the negotiating table as they sought to lay the difficult foundations for greater trust and understanding.
"The conditions for talks on political issues are not ready yet," said Li Peng, the deputy director of the Taiwan Research Institute at China's Xiamen University.
"The upcoming talks will follow the principle of easy tasks first, difficult tasks later, so that means economic issues first, political issues later." - AFP/ac
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