China warns of ‘complex changes’ in Taiwan election year

In response to expanding the admission quota for Chinese students pursuing associate to bachelor’s degrees in Taiwan, the Mainland Affairs Council stated that the decision will not only improve understanding between students from both sides of the strait, but will also positively develop cross-strait relations.

BEIJING-Cabinet officials from China and Taiwan have spoken for the first time using a newly inaugurated hotline, the latest effort to build trust between the longtime rivals.

Defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war with the Communists in 1949.

“I sincerely hope relations across the Taiwan Strait continue to maintain their trend of peaceful development and that the results of this won’t slip away now they have been achieved”, Zhang said in a statement on the office’s website.

Tsai’s DPP backs Taiwan’s formal independence, and she has refused to endorse Beijing’s demand that she recognize the island and mainland as part of a single Chinese nation.

Bitter hostility between the sides has eased considerably over the past two decades, especially under the pro-China policies of Ma Ying-jeou, who was elected as Taiwan’s president in 2008.

“Both the meeting itself and the meaning of the 1992 Consensus reached after the meeting have complete records and should not be doubted”, Ma said. That was seen as a pre-election message to Taiwanese voters, and to the opposition and more independence-minded Democratic People’s Party (DPP), which has never endorsed the “one China” idea.

Adhering to the 1992 Consensus has been the common political ground for the mainland and Taiwan. For one thing, Mr. Ma’s comments were ostensibly an attempt by Beijing to corner Ms. Tsai and to give her opponent from the KMT, Eric Chu, a much-needed boost. It described the hotline as “another important step forward” in exchanges between China and Taiwan.

But there is deep suspicion in Taiwan about the warming ties with Beijing.