With long handshake, China and Taiwan affirm better ties

It was the 80 seconds China and Taiwan had waited almost 70 years for.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Taiwanese counterpart, Ma Ying-jeou, smiled in dark suits -Xi wearing a Communist red tie, Ma, a Nationalist blue one - as they shook hands for more than a minute before hundreds of reporters in Singapore.

The first face-to-face encounter since 1945 between leaders of China's civil war foes provided a new high-water mark in efforts to resolve one of the last century's biggest unsettled conflicts. The handshake and the 50-minute closed door meeting that followed cap a seven-year effort by Ma to strengthen economic ties across the 180-kilometer (110 mile) Taiwan Strait before he leaves office next year.

It may bring Xi one step closer to realising China's dream of reunification. While investment, tourism and trade have flourished between the two sides under Ma, they remain politically distant, one democratic, the other ruled by the Communist Party. Saturday's handshake is the closest they've come to bridging that divide.

Creating Precedent
"It's a major breakthrough because the real impact of this meeting is that it creates a precedent," said Hoo Tiang Boon, an assistant professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "The real substantial thing is that they met and had a handshake. It's the first time. And when you have a first time you always have a possibility of a second time."