China and Taiwan have come pretty far in the past few weeks with the talks between Lien Chan (KMT) and Hu Jing Tao. Here is an encouraging press communique released as a result. I feel really upbeat about the situation, as personally, i think eventual reunification is the right way to go.

China and Taiwan's negotiation seems mainly one way though - despite some concessions (lifting the ban on tourists heading to Taiwan along with fruit imports) and two cuddly pandas, China still refuses to budge about Taiwan dropping its pro-independence stance (held by the ruling DPP party).

In a way, China hopes that the talks, the concessions and the pandas (if accepted*) will undermine support for Chen Shui Bian and the DPP. It is not hard to imagine the KMT winning presidency in the next election!

I used to be really proud of living in Taiwan, and shuddered at the thought of this mainland gobbling up the island (ok, i might a kid then, but it still reflects broadly the pride Taiwanese take in their country). Put it this way, with Hong Kong - before the reunification of 1997, people were leaving and immigrating to countries like Canada, worried that things would change when China took over. The mentality is very similar in Taiwan.

Today, however, things are changing: increasingly, Taiwan views China as a place to invest - almost like the symbiotic business relationship between Japan and China (but because of the language and culture similarities, mainland Chinese are more comfortable working with Taiwanese). The continued success of Hong Kong also shows that a "one country, two systems" policy does work pretty well.

At the end of the day, as long as China does not threaten the democracy on the island, i think it will be to Taiwan's (mainly economic?) advantage to reunify with China. It would interesting to see... if I never left Taiwan, would I feel the same way as I do now?

*reading in between the lines at the panda situation, it is a bit of a double edge sword. Pandas are part of the CITES convention which restricts exports of endangered animals. So by accepting them, Taiwan would be implicitly acknowledging they are a province of China. Anyway, Taiwan has turned down panda offers in the past several times too on similar fears.