BEIJING — Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian on Tuesday invited Chinese President Hu Jintao to visit the island and see for himself whether it is a sovereign country.
But Beijing told Chen that unless he recognized that Taiwan was part of China, a meeting with him was out of the question.
Chen made the invitation during a visit to Kiribati, a chain of coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean with a population of about 100,000. Once known as the Gilbert Islands, Kiribati is one of about two dozen mostly small, island nations in the world that maintain diplomatic ties with Taipei instead of Beijing.
"Mainland China clearly lacks understanding about Taiwan, and that's why there has been misjudgment and misunderstanding," Chen said. "If [Hu] can visit Taiwan in person, I feel the misunderstanding can be avoided and misjudgment can be effectively reduced."
Analysts say Chen's invitation to Hu is a desperate attempt to regain control of Taiwan's China policy after the just-ended trip of Taiwanese opposition leader Lien Chan to China. The trip was the first meeting between the Nationalists, who once ruled China, and the Communists, who defeated them during a civil war that ended in 1949.
"He's saying, 'Don't ignore me, I should be the one calling the shots,' " Chien-min Chao, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, said of Chen's invitation.
But public sentiment appears to be turning against Chen's pro-independence policies. Opinion polls on the island are swinging favorably toward Lien's conciliatory gesture to Beijing. Attention is about to shift to a second mainland visit by a Taiwanese politician: James Soong, leader of another opposition party, which like the Nationalists, favors eventual unification.
Soong, who will travel to the mainland this week, is expected to carry a message from Chen to Hu, most likely aimed at initiating dialogue.
The mainland's courtship of Chen's political opponents has been seen as a divide-and-conquer strategy to isolate Chen.
"We welcome exchange and dialogue with all political parties ... with a view to jointly promoting the improvement and development of cross-strait relations," said Wang Zaixi, deputy head of the Communist Party's Taiwan Work Office in Beijing.
"We have made it clear on many occasions that we welcome visits to the mainland by DPP [Chen's Democratic Progressive Party] members at the middle and lower levels of the party in private capacities. Chen Shui-bian does not belong in this category."
