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翻译公司最新消息：
Negotiators from Taiwan and China launched their first formal talks in almost a decade Thursday, aiming to forge agreements on charter flights and tourism to build confidence between the long-estranged rivals.
Taiwan's delegation Thursday also planned to discuss what additional help the island could provide for China's earthquake relief efforts. The talks are scheduled to run through Friday at a state guesthouse in western Beijing.
The 19-member Taiwanese team is being led by Chiang Pin-kung, chairman of the quasi-governmental Straits Exchange Foundation, and includes two vice Cabinet ministers -- the highest-ranking Taiwanese officials ever to participate in bilateral talks.
The negotiations should lay the foundation for "a long-term peaceful relationship between the two sides," Chiang said as the talks opened. "The two sides have ... established mutual trust."
His counterpart, Chen Yunlin, head of Beijing's semiofficial Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, said the public on both sides were counting on the talks to produce results and alter the often combative tone between the two governments.
"Whether cross-strait relations can improve, depends on whether our negotiations can proceed smoothly," Chen said.
Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949. While Beijing demands unification -- by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary -- an overwhelming number of Taiwanese oppose that option, preferring an open-ended continuation of the democratic island's de facto independence.
Still, many Taiwanese favor closer economic cooperation with the mainland, which has already absorbed more than $100 billion in Taiwanese investment over the past 15 years -- much of it in the high tech sector. VideoWatch a report on warming relations between Beijing and Taipei »
Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou won the presidency in March largely on his promises to reinvigorate the country's laggard economy by hitching the island's wagon to China's economic juggernaut.
Chiang's delegation is seen as the first step in fulfilling that pledge.
The 75-year-old economic planner said Tuesday he expected to sign an accord opening the way for 36 charter flights to cross the 100-mile- (160-kilometer-) wide Taiwan Strait every weekend.
That will be enough to shuttle several hundred thousand Chinese tourists to Taiwan every year -- below Ma's target of one million, but far above the current level of about 80,000.
Charter flights are now limited to four annual Chinese holidays. Ma wants to gradually expand the charter schedule and supplement it with regularly scheduled flights by the summer of 2009. Such flights have been on hold for the past 59 years.
The last time Chinese and Taiwanese delegations met in a formal setting, Lee Teng-hui of Ma's Nationalist Party was Taiwan's president. But the talks were suspended after Lee said that Taiwan's relations with China should have a state-to-state character -- a declaration that Beijing saw as support for the official Taiwanese independence it has sworn to confront with military force.
Successor Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party was even less popular than Lee, because of his outspoken support for the Taiwan independence option.
Ma campaigned on a platform of turning the corner on Chen's policies, even while promising not to discuss unification -- the central goal of China's Taiwan policy since the 1949 split.
He has, however, pledged to work toward a formal peace treaty, without detailing its prospective contents.
台湾《联合报》12日发文说，此番江陈会“多了相依的氛围”，在江丙坤和陈云林的努力下，可以再创新局，希望两会重新携手是“云清日明，乾坤调和”，在双方努力下可以再创新局。
该文并说，和当年辜汪两会交手最不一样的是，两会拼场的记者会没了，各自发表新闻稿较劲的味道少了，反而是彼此作球多了，陈云林与江丙坤都在强调两岸、两会那种相依相存的微妙关系，小心地握着这难得的契机与氛围，谁也不要轻易弄翻了它。
台湾TVBS新闻台在今天的直播过程中不断插播两会会谈的最新消息，并多次与派驻北京的记者连线，报道中也专访了相关学者，对两会复谈进行解读。
台湾“中央社”在新闻稿中更是以“两岸两会复谈 江陈会相见欢”来突出今日会面的轻松气氛。
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