A step toward common cross-Straits dream

As Chinese New Year celebrations wound down and the Lantern Festival on Feb 14 approached, a historic meeting took place in Nanjing between Wang Yu-chi, the head of Taiwan's mainland affairs council, and Zhang Zhijun, director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office.

The meeting on Feb 11 marked the first time since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 that the two sides have held such high-level official talks, and they agreed to establish a permanent communication channel that will complement the semi-governmental bridge between the Taipei-based Straits Exchange Foundation and the Beijing-based Association of Relations Across the Straits set up in the 1990s.

The talks between Wang and Zhang did not clarify all the ambiguities surrounding the Taiwan Straits, but they signaled that beyond increasingly strong business and financial synergies both sides want to see more political convergence.