CPC leader Xi to meet with KMT leader Chu, who will head delegation to Beijing in May

Top leaders of the Communist Party of China and Taiwan's Kuomintang will meet in Beijing in early May to discuss CPC-KMT exchanges and cross-Straits relations, a senior official from the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office said on Friday.

Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for the office, said KMT Chairman Eric Chu will lead a delegation to visit Beijing after joining in the Cross-Straits Economic, Trade and Culture Forum that is scheduled to start in Shanghai on May 3.

Haiwainet.cn reported that Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, will meet Chu on May 4, and they will exchange views on topics related to cross-Straits prosperity and people's welfare.

Chu will visit Peking University in the afternoon of May 4 to talk with teachers and students before going to Fragrant Hills Park in Beijing to visit Dr Sun Yat-sen's memorial.

The 53-year-old Chu will be the first KMT chairman to set foot on the mainland while KMT is the ruling party in Taiwan since 1949.

Chu has visited the mainland twice before. In 1998, he visited Peking University as a visiting professor for the university's centenary. In 2009, as KMT's vice-chairman, he attended the first Cross-Straits Forum in Xiamen, Fujian province.

Chu was elected KMT chairman in January. Xi then called for strengthened communication between the two parties in a congratulatory message to him, and in his reply to Xi's message, Chu said he expects the two parties to continue to expand exchanges.

He also publicly expressed in a forum in Hong Kong in March that the KMT's position on the 1992 Consensus was consistent and that the KMT will continue exchanges with the CPC.

The 1992 Consensus is the acknowledgment that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one and the same China.

High-level communications between cross-Straits leaders have increased since 2005, when Hu Jintao, then-general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, met with then-KMT chairman Lien Chan in Beijing, and the annual Cross-Straits Economic, Trade and Culture Forum was inaugurated.

Communications have further increased since 2008, when then-KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou won the island's leadership election.

"The landmark meeting will surely go down in the history of the development of cross-Straits ties. Eric Chu's visit to Beijing means he not only agrees to continue promoting the progress that the two parties have made over the years, but he is also willing to expand cross-Straits exchanges," said Chen Xiancai, a Taiwan studies scholar at Xiamen University.

The historic step will mark a new stage of development in the cross-Straits exchanges. But Chen also said the meeting will have more symbolic significance because the KMT is increasingly losing support to Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

"KMT's mainland policies have helped gain support since the party resumed ruling over the island in 2008, and the fruits of the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations have been widely recognized," Zhu Songling, a professor of Taiwan affairs at Beijing Union University, told Xinhua News Agency.

Zhu believes that Chu is likely to follow Ma Ying-jeou's policy on developing cross-Straits relations and that the major direction will not change.

hena@chinadaily.com.cn