Summary Long-frosty relations between Taiwan and its giant neighbour have improved significantly.
TAIPEI (AFP) - Taiwan s minister in charge of China affairs said Tuesday he plans to visit the mainland next month in a landmark trip that marks the first official contact between the two former bitter rivals in six decades.
Wang Yu-chi, chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council which formulates the island s China policy, is scheduled to fly to the mainland on February 11 to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Zhang Zhijun, China s Taiwan Affairs Office chief.
The meeting in Nanjing in China s eastern Jiangsu province symbolises persistent efforts to normalise relations in recent years after a decades-long freeze.
"The trip has crucial implications for further institutionalisation of the ties between the two sides of the Straits," Wang told a press briefing.
"As the first Mainland Affairs Council chairman to visit the mainland, I feel my responsibility is arduous and the road long."
In June 2010 Taiwan and China signed the landmark Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a pact widely characterised as the boldest step yet towards reconciliation since the two were split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.
However, the hard-won trade pact, along with other achievements like direct flights, was the result of negotiations by quasi-official bodies from each side as Taipei and Beijing still had no official contact, despite the fast-warming ties.
Wang will visit the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of the Republic of China (Taiwan s official title) and deliver a speech at Nanjing University the next day, before proceeding to Shanghai.
Long-frosty relations between Taiwan and its giant neighbour have improved significantly since Ma Ying-jeou of the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party came to power in 2008. He was re-elected in January 2012.
Since Taiwan s split from China 65 years ago, Beijing has refused to renounce the possibility of using force to take back the island, which it regards as a rebel region awaiting reunification with the mainland.
