BEIJING -- The just-ended visit of Lien Chan, the chairman of Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT), to China symbolized the end of a long-standing intra-China feud and is undeniably a diplomatic breakthrough for both sides.
In his April 29 meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Lien sought and was accorded sufficient room to express pride in Taiwan's way of doing things within the context of respect and implied fealty to a shared imagined community called China. The public relations success of this risky diplomatic gamble raises the prospects of true cross-straits reconciliation and the imminent resolution of historical issues.
Though the deft panda diplomacy (China offered two giant pandas to Taiwan as a goodwill gesture) and scenic photo ops brought to mind U.S. President Richard Nixon's trip to China in 1972, Lien's visit was both more and less: less because Lien arrived representing not a government, but an opposition political party; more because there was no need for an army of interpreters. Lien returned to the land of his birth to patch up a long-standing "family" quarrel.
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