In a first, China sends a minister to Taiwan

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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China has sent its first ever
ministerial-level official to Taiwan for four days of meetings to
rebuild ties with the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.
Protests
in Taipei had set back relations earlier this year — and Zhang Zhijun
had to go around scores of anti-China demonstrators to enter a hotel for
the talks — but he said he was very happy to be the first Taiwan
Affairs Office minister to visit the island.
"To reach Taiwan from
Beijing I flew three hours, but to take that step took no less than 65
years," he said in remarks opening the meeting with his counterpart Wang
Yu-chi.
China has described the trip as a chance for Zhang to
understand the island better. Analysts say he will likely keep a low
profile as he travels around Taiwan through Saturday, avoiding strong
political statements during scheduled chats with students, low-income
people and a figure in Taiwan’s anti-China chief opposition party.
China
and Taiwan have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of
the 1940s. China sees the island as part of its territory that
eventually must be reunified — by force if necessary — despite a
Taiwanese public largely wary of the notion of Chinese rule.
In 2008, Beijing set aside its military threats to sign agreements binding its economy to that of the
investment-hungry island.
Dialogue
opened that year as Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou agreed to put off
political issues to build trust and improve the island’s economy through
tie-ups with China’s much larger one. The two sides have signed 21
deals, boosting two-way trade to $124.4 billion last year and bringing
in about 3 million mainland tourists, who were once all but banned.
The
easing in tensions across the Taiwan Strait has been welcomed by
Washington, and its top diplomat for East Asia, Daniel Russel, said the
U.S. was watching Zhang’s visit with interest.
"We welcome all
steps forward on cross-Strait relations that are acceptable to the
people on both sides," Russel told reporters in Washington.
But in
March, hundreds of student-led protesters forcibly occupied parliament
in Taipei to try to stop ratification of a two-way service trade
liberalization pact between the mainland and Taiwan. The 24-day action
dubbed the Sunflower Movement spiraled into the thousands, many of whom
demanded an end to Taiwan’s engagement with China, which they still see
as an enemy.
On Wednesday Zhang compared China-Taiwan relations to taking a boat upstream.
"If it doesn’t go forward, it goes backward," he said.
The
two men discussed details of establishing first-ever consular-style
offices to help to investors and tourists. They also agreed to
renegotiate minor clauses of the services trade pact after it takes
effect.
Despite the protests, Taiwan’s parliament is expected to ratify the deal, although it’s not clear when
that would happen.
Taiwan
says it will make no announcements during the visit, and the main
opposition party says it will not organize protests against Zhang,
though smaller protest groups are vowing to follow him. More than 100
scuffled with supporters at the airport and clashed with a column of
police at the hotel, leaving one activist injured.
"Amid all these
tensions this particular visit obviously is important in terms of
trying to soothe sentiments and trying to stabilize relations," said
Dali Yang, a China expert at the University of Chicago. "Any
representative from the mainland, going to Taiwan, I think the best they
can do is to try to stabilize relations."
But the lack of big protests doesn’t mean that more Taiwanese want closer ties with China, analysts say.

"The
best one could say is that a muting of protests would reflect a
maturing of attitudes in Taiwan, and a greater willingness to listen and
to express concerns in a less confrontational way," said Alan Romberg,
East Asia Program director at The Stimson Centre, a Washington-based
think tank. "But it would not mean that those concerns have
disappeared."
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Associated Press writers Gillian Wong in Beijing and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed.

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