TAIPEI — A top Chinese negotiator arrived in Taiwan on Wednesday for his first visit to the south, the island’s stronghold of anti-China sentiment.
Chen Yunlin, leading a delegation of about 20 Chinese companies, landed in an airport near Taipei amid tight security while dozens of protesters rallied and scuffled briefly with the police.
Chen, chief of China’s semi-official Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, is scheduled to attend a business forum and a dinner banquet in Taipei later Wednesday, organisers of his trip said.
On Thursday, he is due to leave for Kaohsiung, the island’s biggest city in the south, where radical anti-China groups have vowed to stage mass protests wherever he goes.
Chen reportedly had to drop plans to visit Tainan, another stronghold of the island’s pro-independence forces, due to security concerns.
His previous visits to Taiwan had sparked protests from those who feared that closer ties with China could erode the island’s de facto sovereignty.
In the absence of official contacts between the two sides, Chen’s association is authorised by Beijing to handle civilian exchanges with Taiwan.
China still claims Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting unification, by force if necessary, even though the two sides have been governed separately since the end of a civil war in 1949.
However, ties have improved markedly since Beijing-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008.
