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. Although characterised by various commentators as either "a major breakthrough" and "a big step closer" or as "overly hasty and careless", the resumption of contacts between the quasi-official agencies and intensive dialogue between Taiwan's ruling KMT and the People's Republic of China's (PRC) ruling Chinese Communist Party also signalled a new environment favourable for progress on a long-awaited bilateral financial services 'memorandum of understanding' (MOU), which would allow Taiwan and PRC banks to be able to directly enter each others' markets under an authorised financial supervisory system. Although the subject of discussion for years, political differences between Taipei and Beijing had blocked progress.
展开▼
