Chinese mainland official calls for solving cross-strait political differences

A senior Chinese mainland official in charge of Taiwan affairs on Thursday called for greater efforts to solve political differences across the Taiwan Strait. Addressing the opening ceremony of the "Beijing Talk" seminar on mainland-Taiwan relations, Sun Yafu, deputy director of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said both sides should focus on removing cross-strait political divergences. Sun also suggested seeking common ground while preserving differences at the seminar, which is being held to explore political arrangements between the mainland and Taiwan. "The discussion of cross-strait political relations should be practical. Any proposal that is divorced from reality will go nowhere," Sun said at the two-day seminar, which is being attended by more than 100 scholars from both sides of the strait, including those from Taiwan University and the Institute of Taiwan Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Science. Both sides should be practical and make fair and reasonable arrangements in order to comprehensively improve cross-strait relations, he said. The arrangement should also include foreign affairs issues within the "one China" framework, Sun said. Kao Yu-jen, president of Taiwan's 21st Century Foundation, said a cross-strait negotiation mechanism should be established as early as possible in order to allow both sides to discuss political issues. Professor Chang Yia-chung, president of the Chinese Integration Association and a political science teacher at Taiwan University, said the "Chinese dream" should be shared by both sides of the strait and that Taiwan should play an important role in the rejuvenation of China. Mainland-Taiwan relations entered a tense era after the Kuomintang (KMT) lost a civil war with the Communist Party of China (CPC) and fled to Taiwan in the late 1940s. But relations between the two warmed up after the KMT, led by a new generation of leaders, returned to power in a 2008 election, ending eight years of rule by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.