The May 20 inauguration of Taiwan’s new Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) government under president Ma Ying-jeou quickly led to the resumption of semi-official cross-strait discussions between Taipei and Beijing.
After a decade-long suspension, negotiators for Taipei’s ‘white glove’ Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) and Beijing’s counterpart Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) inked quasi-official agreements to initiate direct weekend cross-strait passenger charter flights and to open Taiwan to 3000 Chinese tourists a day.
