China's Xi Jinping Meets Taiwan Ruling Party Chief: Reports

Beijing: Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping held talks with the visiting leader of Taiwan's ruling party today, state media reported, the first such meeting for seven years.

Xi, who is also China's president, welcomed Kuomintang (KMT) party head Eric Chu, the official Xinhua news agency reported in a brief dispatch.

Pictures showed the two men smiling and shaking hands at the Great Hall of the People.

Relations between the political parties that fought a civil war decades ago for control of the mainland have been improving since the 2008 return to power in Taipei by the KMT, which has a non-confrontational stance towards the mainland.

China and Taiwan split at the end of the civil war in 1949, and Beijing still regards the island as a province awaiting reunification, never ruling out the use of force to achieve it.

In 2005 veteran Taiwanese politician Lien Chan made the first trip to the mainland by a KMT chief since 1949.

That visit came as tensions with China mounted under then-president Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party, whose pro-independence views are anathema to Beijing.

Lien's landmark visit helped pave the way for relations to warm after the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou succeeded Chen in 2008. The same year KMT chairman Wu Po-hsiung visited the mainland, the last holder of the post to do so.

In June 2010 the two sides signed a trade pact known as the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, widely seen as the boldest step yet towards reconciliation.

Ma was re-elected in 2012 but public sentiment in Taiwan has since turned against cosying up too snugly with Beijing, with voters saying trade deals have been agreed in secret and not benefited ordinary citizens.

In March last year around 200 students occupied parliament for more than three weeks to demonstrate against a controversial services trade pact, while thousands rallied in support of what became known as the "Sunflower Movement".

The KMT suffered its worst-ever showing in local polls in November - seen as a barometer for presidential elections in 2016 - and Ma eventually stepped down as party chief, replaced by Chu.

The meeting comes in the wake of Taipei's application to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank being rejected, with Beijing saying the island could join later under an "appropriate name".

Taiwan's official name is the Republic of China, but the International Olympic Committee refers to it as "Chinese Taipei", and at the Asian Development Bank it is known as "Taipei, China".

Chu said at a forum in Shanghai yesterday that he was "optimistic" about the island joining the development bank.