Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou has said Taiwan and China can peacefully resolve their differences, adding that people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait share the same culture and history.
Ma, president from 2008 to 2016, said this after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping, his second meeting with Xi, following a landmark summit in Singapore in 2015 when Ma was still Taiwan’s leader, which was the first time Chinese and Taiwanese leaders had met following the end of the civil war in 1949.
Speaking on his return from Beijing, Ma said he hoped young Taiwanese can put aside ideology and realise the historical and cultural links between Taiwan and China.
China considers democratically-governed Taiwan its own territory, and has ramped up military and political pressure to assert those claims. Neither government recognises the other.
