KMT Party chief visits mainland

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Governing parties from both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan are reviewing the development of cross-Straits relations. Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of Taiwan's governing Kuomintang party, or KMT, arrived in Beijing on Monday morning. He's scheduled to meet with Communist Party chief, Hu Jintao.

It's the chairman of the Taiwan governing party's second trip to Beijing in the space of a year. But this time around, the flight took less than half the time thanks to the direct flights he'd agreed on with CPC General Secretary Hu Jintao.

Although the announced reason for the visit is to commemorate the burial of the remains of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a revolutionary pioneer and founding father of the KMT, at a mausoleum in Nanjing, Wu's scheduled meeting with Hu Jintao on Tuesday will take up most of the spotlight.

Cross-Strait relations have developed quickly since the KMT won elections in Taiwan last May. Full contact has since been resumed through regular direct air, sea and postal links. Mainland residents are now allowed to tour in Taiwan, and the number of visitors has grown from hundreds to thousands each day.

Taiwan authorities also opened the doors for limited mainland investment on the island. Fresh funds could help stimulate Taiwan's economy, which shrank by a record 10.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter.

The development has also had an impact on the strategy employed by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party. Despite its pro-independence stance, Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu's visit to both Beijing and Shanghai over the weekend made her the highest-ranking DPP official to set foot on the mainland.

Although Chen's schedule centered around promoting the World Games, which Kaohsiung will host in July, and the fact that the DPP said she was not representing them on this visit, Chen did say that she was bringing a new voice to the mainland, since it has previously heard mostly from the KMT. But, significantly, Chen said she had no objections to the media labeling her trip as "ice-breaking".

Compared with Chen Chu's low-key visit, Wu Poh-hsiung's trip is more likely to yield concrete results. But with members of several political parties from Taiwan visiting the mainland in recent months, it seems that, increasingly, more people on the island agree that political differences need to be put to one side for the sake of economic benefit.