Word: ma
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...Ma, 58, seems only too happy to dive into the issue that has dominated his first year as Taiwan's leader. Tourists from the Chinese mainland were allowed to visit Taiwan for the first time last year and are arriving by the thousands each day, he notes, giving the recession-hit local economy a welcome, albeit minor, boost. He stresses that he wants Taiwan to benefit economically from better ties with China - but he won't let the island be assimilated by the rising giant. "I won't sell out Taiwan," Ma told TIME, adding that "I'll sell China...
...Ma has already done more to close ranks with China than anyone in Taiwan's brief history. Ever since Ma's political party, the Kuomintang, fled mainland China to Taiwan after losing a civil war to Mao's communists in 1949, relations between the two have been antagonistic at best. Beijing treats Taiwan as a runaway province and has blocked the democratic Taipei government from receiving diplomatic recognition or participating in many international forums. Both sides armed the Taiwan Strait to the teeth, turning it into one of Asia's most dangerous military flash points. Contact between them has been...
...This has begun to change under Ma, who shortly after taking office established what he calls the "three links": direct shipping, air travel and mail service. In late April, the two sides agreed to more than double the number of weekly direct flights to 270. Ma has also eased limitations on investment by Taiwan companies in China, and his administration recently announced that, for the first time, mainland investments would be allowed in a broad range of Taiwan manufacturing and services companies. China Mobile, the mainland's largest cellular-service provider, has already agreed to invest about $530 million...
...extent, Ma is simply taking the next logical steps toward normalizing relations between two governments that technically don't recognize the other's right to exist, but which have inevitably been drawn together economically. Taiwan is a global center of IT manufacturing, and in recent years, the island's companies have for competitive reasons been compelled to open factories on the mainland, taking advantage of a liberalization of Taipei's restrictions on such investments. More than a million people from Taiwan now live in China in industrial centers near Shanghai in the east and in Guangdong province in the south...
...easing of tensions has come about in part because Ma, a Harvard Law School graduate and former Taipei mayor, is a far more palatable politician to Beijing than his more confrontational predecessor, Chen Shui-bian. China's leaders ultimately want the island and the mainland to reunite. During his eight years as President, Chen irked Beijing by flirting with ways of making Taiwan more formally independent, such as scheduling a referendum on applying for U.N. membership under the name Taiwan. Ma, on the other hand, has promised not to declare Taiwan an independent state, a position that has made...