'Tea chat' leads to talk of unprecedented Xi-Ma summit
Mainland and Taiwan officials meet in Shanghai hotel to thrash out sticking points for first-ever face-to-face summit between two top leaders
Top officials in charge of cross-strait relations for Beijing and Taipei last night broached the sensitive topic of a summit of leaders from both sides during an hours-long "tea chat" at the Fairmont Peace Hotel in Shanghai.
The possibily of an unprecedented face-to-face meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou was discussed by Zhang Zhijun , director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, and his Taiwanese counterpart, Wang Yu-chi, as part of the first official talks in more than six decades between the two former civil war rivals.
"The two sides have expressed their respective stands on the issue," said Wu Mei-hung, a spokeswoman for Wang's Mainland Affairs Council, after the nearly three-hour discussion.
Several sticking points remain, such as where and in what capacity the two leaders would meet. Ma, who is said to want a presidential summit to cap off his legacy of improved relations with Beijing, has proposed meeting Xi at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum, which will be held in Beijing this year.
But mainland leaders, who view Taiwan as a breakaway province, want to avoid an international setting that might give the impression that cross-strait affairs are anything other than domestic.
The first-of-its-kind dialogue between Zhang and Wang, which began in Nanjing on Tuesday, marked the first government-to-government talks by the two sides since the Nationalists were fled to Taiwan in 1949.