Northwest Florida Daily News
By: The Associated Press
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s president will meet Saturday with his counterpart from once
icy political rival China, the Taiwanese side said, a historic first culminating nearly eight years of quickly improved relations despite wariness among many Taiwanese of the mainland government.
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore to exchange ideas about relations between the two sides but not sign any deals, presidential spokesman Charles Chen said in a statement early Wednesday.
Presidents of the two sides have not met since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communists in the 1940s, and the Nationalists rebased in Taiwan 160 kilometers (100 miles) away. The two sides have been separately ruled since then.
Fort Walton Beach and Crestview business leader Paul Hsu was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1950, the year after the two countries’ presidents last met. He said growing up in Taipei, the relationship between the two countries was always very hostile. [FULL STORY]