China, Taiwan leaders open summit with historic handshake

The presidents of China and Taiwan reached across decades of Cold War estrangement and rivalry for a historic handshake Saturday, before exchanging warm words in the first summit since the two sides' traumatic 1949 split.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou shook hands and smiled broadly as they met in Singapore, in a scene considered unthinkable until recently.

They later sat down across a table from each other, with Xi praising the summit as opening a "historic chapter in our relations" and repeating China's oft-expressed desire for eventual reunification.

"The development of cross-strait relations over the past 66 years show that no matter what kind of winds and rains are experienced by compatriots on the two sides, no matter how long divisions last, there is no power that can separate us," Xi said.

"We are brothers connected by flesh even if our bones are broken, we are a family whose blood is thicker than water."

No agreements or joint statements are expected from the encounter between two sides that still refuse to formally recognise each other's legitimacy, and the meeting's lasting significance remains to be seen.

But the encounter is undeniably historic: the previous occasion was in 1945, when Communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong met with China's nationalist President Chiang Kai-shek in a failed reconciliation attempt.

The later Communist takeover forced Chiang's armies and about two million followers to flee to Taiwan, then a backwater island province, leaving a national rupture that has preoccupied both sides ever since.

"Even though this is the first meeting, we feel like old friends," Ma told Xi. 

"Behind us is history stretching for 60 years. Now before our eyes there are fruits of conciliation instead of confrontation."