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Cross-strait hostility at worrying level, Taiwan’s Ma Ying-jeou tells top mainland China official
- Covid and politics have stopped contact between the two sides, Ma says on landmark trip across the Taiwan Strait
- He also pays cautious tribute to self-ruled island’s political system in remarks unlikely to offend Beijing, analyst says
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Amber Wangin Beijing
Public hostility across the Taiwan Strait has reached worrying levels in recent years as contact has been cut, former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou told Beijing’s point man on Taiwan policy on Thursday.
“Regrettably, due to political disturbances and the Covid-19 pandemic, exchange programmes were severed for years, and it worries me to see the hostility of people across the strait grow,” Ma said in a meeting in the central city of Wuhan with Song Tao, head of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
Song is the most senior mainland official Ma has met on his historic trip – the first by a former leader of the self-ruled island to the mainland since the end of China’s civil war in 1949.
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During the meeting Ma reaffirmed the 1992 consensus that there is only “one China”, with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
Beijing insists on the consensus as a foundation for talks and Ma recalled his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore in 2015, when both reaffirmed the principle.
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“I met Mr Xi in 2015 to show to the outside world that cross-strait relations can be handled by the two sides themselves in a peaceful way, and will develop in an institutionalised way in the future,” he said.
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