Taiwan's PFP leader arrives for bridge-building visit
(chinadaily.com.cn/Agencies)
Updated: 2005-05-05 15:56

James Soong, chairman of the People First Party in Taiwan, and his wife wave to well-wishers upon his arrival in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province May 5, 2005. [Xinhua]

James Soong, chairman of Taiwan's People First Party and leading an 80-member delegation, arrived in Xi'an in Shaanxi Province at about 15:25pm Beijing time to begin a landmark visit to the mainland.

During his speech at the airport in Xi'an, he said people from both sides of the Taiwan Straits are Chinese and are all against Taiwan independence. Soong said reconciliation and peace will lead to prosperity to both Taiwan and mainland.

"The ancestors of all the people in Taiwan came from the land I'm now setting foot on," he said, adding both the people in Taiwan and the mainland "are in the same family and should of course create our common future."

"The PFP delegation is here to build a bridge of mutual trust, mutual understanding and cooperation between Taiwan and the mainland," he said.

Soong said his trip to the mainland is a bridge-building visit. The nine-day visit by James Soong, chairman of the pro-reunification People First Party (PFP), came on the heels of a historic reconciliation between Taiwan's biggest opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT) and Beijing.

Last Friday, KMT chairman Lien Chan shook hands with Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and ended decades of hostilities between the civil war enemies.

"We sincerely hope to build a bridge of mutual trust, cooperation and communication between the two sides," Soong said at the airport before boarding his flight to Xi'an. "The gap between the two sides is not geographical, but psychological."

Beijing refuses to deal with Chen, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), unless he first renounces his independence vision.

Soong said he aims to help the mainland better understand Taiwan, but will not act as an envoy for Chen or relay any specific messages from Chen to Hu when they meet on May 11 or 12.

James Soong speaks at the Xi'an airport after his arrival for a nine-day landmark visit to the mainland May 5, 2005. [Xinhua]

Some analysts say Soong may act as an intermediary between Chen and Beijing, perhaps even pave the way for an interim peace pact.

But Soong downplayed suggestions that he was to use the trip to deliver a message from the island's pro-independence leader Chen Shui-bian to the central authorities.

"The PFP hopes to build a bridge of trust, cooperation and communication between the two sides," Soong told reporters at the airport in Taiwan's capital Taipei shortly before his departure.

"I am not doing this for any individual but to resolve the misunderstandings that have existed between the two sides in decades in order to usher in a new era," he said.

Soong said Taiwan independence will lead to disaster and stressed the common cultural heritage of people on both sides of the Strait, who were all descendents of the Yellow Emperor.

Stewardesses appointed to facilitate Soong's visit all hail from central Hunan province, the ancestral home of the Soong family, according to the Xinhua news agency.

And in his ancestral village, locals have paved a cement road leading to the tomb of Soong's ancestors to improve access, Xinhua said.

Soong, 63, was a leading figure in the KMT before founding his own party in 2000.

From Xi'an, Soong is to travel to Nanjing, Shanghai, then to his ancestral hometown of Xiangtan in Hunan province before flying to Beijing on Tuesday. He will give a speech at Tsinghua University on Wednesday and returns to Taipei on Friday, May 13.

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