SINGAPORE: The presidents of China and Taiwan reached across decades of Cold War-era estrangement and rivalry to exchange a historic handshake and warm words in the first summit since the two sides’ traumatic 1949 split.

China’s Xi Jinping and Taiwan’s Ma Ying-jeou shook hands for more than a minute and smiled for a mass of reporters before their talks in Singapore in scenes considered unthinkable until recently.

They later sat down across a table from each other, with Xi praising the event as opening a “historic chapter in our relations” and repeating China’s oft-expressed desire for eventual reunification.

Read: A fine balance: Xi-Ma meet is exercise in etiquette

“We are brothers connected by flesh even if our bones are broken. We are a family whose blood is thicker than water,” Xi said.

He added that “no matter what kind of winds and rains are experienced by compatriots on the two sides, no matter how long divisions last, there is no power that can separate us”. Despite the apparent warmth, the hour-long meeting’s lasting significance remains to be seen.

No agreements were announced between two sides that still refuse to formally recognise each other’s legitimacy and Ma’s moves face significant opposition at home.

But the encounter is undeniably historic: the previous occasion was in 1945, when Communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong met with China’s nationalist President Chiang Kai-shek in a failed reconciliation attempt.

The eventual Communist takeover forced Chiang’s armies and about two million followers to flee to Taiwan, then a backwater island province, leaving a national rupture that has preoccupied both sides ever since.

“Behind us there is more than six decades of cross-strait separation. Now before our eyes are the common fruits of the policy of replacing opposition with dialogue,” Ma told Xi, in the unexpectedly cordial encounter. Ma later told reporters he proposed the establishment of a hotline between to the two sides and that Xi responded positively.

He also raised issues sensitive to Taiwan’s people, including the arsenal of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan, and China’s policy of marginalising the island diplomatically.

“We hope these things do not continue,” said Ma, calling for “mutual respect”. Xi did not address reporters, leaving that to a lower-ranking official.

Ma has expressed hope the meeting could be a step toward normalising cross-strait relations, but no further plans for closer contact emerged.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play