, arrived on the mainland yesterday for a 12-day visit, becoming the highest-ranking KMT member to travel across the Taiwan Strait since the civil war in 1949, SCMP reportedMr Wu said he hoped to meet President Jiang Zemin. Speculation is rife that his visit will pave the way for an historic visit to China by KMT chairman Lien Chan. "If we have the chance to express [our thoughts to Mr Jiang], we will do so," Mr Wu said before his departure.
"We hope to have benign interaction, ease tension and foster exchanges [between the two sides]," said the KMT official, who is leading a delegation including former Democratic Progressive Party chairman Hsu Hsin-liang.
Mr Wu is travelling with a 40-member delegation including several lawmakers. The group will visit Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xiamen before wrapping up the trip on November 28.
Mr Wu's official schedule does not list appointments with Chinese officials, but sightseeing excursions and meetings with Taiwan investors in China.
However, Taiwan's official Central News Agency said on Tuesday that he was expected to meet Vice-Premier Qian Qichen, Vice-Chairmen Ye Xuanping and Zhang Kehui of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
It said he also might visit Mr Jiang and Communist Party Vice-Chairman Hu Jintao.
Mr Wu has kept the trip low-key, saying his main purpose is to attend a world conference of the ethnic Hakka clan in Xiamen, Fujian province, on Monday and Tuesday. The delegation also includes several legislators from the Hakka minority.
Since Taiwan's President, Chen Shui-bian, took power in May, ending more than half a century of KMT rule, several high-ranking KMT members and scores of pro-unification opposition lawmakers have visited China, while Beijing shuns official contact with Mr Chen's administration and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
In contrast to the KMT and other opposition parties, the DPP, which says the island is independent and sovereign, does not pursue unification with China, viewing it only as one of many options including independence.
Mr Chen, who has repeatedly urged Beijing to resume cross-strait dialogue, has branded the opposition's eagerness to court Beijing as "China fever".
Last month, he expressed concern that Beijing's strategy was to try to sabotage the internal unity of Taiwan.
Such concerns appear more relevant now, with Mr Wu's trip coming at a time when the KMT, which still holds a majority in the legislature, and its allies are threatening Mr Chen with a presidential recall. The threat poses the most serious challenge to his leadership, barely six months into his four-year term.
In September, Chiang Pin-kung, top economic planner under the previous KMT government, went to Beijing and Shanghai, meeting Chinese Vice-Premier Qian Qichen and China's top Taiwan negotiator, Wang Daohan.
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