Star Duo for Taiwan Dialogue

The mainland's former Taiwan point man Chen Yunlin was elected president of the Association for Relations Across the  Taiwan Straits (ARATS) on June 3. Wang Yi, a veteran diplomat, replaced Chen as minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council and the Taiwan Work Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

ARATS, a nongovernmental organization authorized by the Chinese Government to handle technical and business affairs with Taiwan, was founded in December 1991.

Chen, 66, was appointed vice minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council in 1994 and promoted to minister of the office in 1997.

In his 10-year tenure, Chen participated in a large number of cross-Straits exchange activities. Last month, he accompanied Kuomintang Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung on a six-day mainland tour.

Chen's first job in his new capacity is to host the first consultation between ARATS and Taiwan-based Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) in nine years later this month. A delegation headed by SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kun would visit Beijing for this purpose on June 11-14.

ARATS' Wang and late SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu held two historical meetings in April 1993 and October 1998 on a wide range of issues. The two meetings played a significant role in pushing forward cross-Straits ties and strengthening bilateral exchanges. However, dialogue between the two organizations halted in 1999 after former Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui put forward the "two states" theory in pursuit of "Taiwan independence."

The mainland's new top official in charge of Taiwan affairs, the 55-year-old Wang, was executive vice minister of foreign affairs before the appointment. He won fame as a skilled negotiator after he successfully hosted the first three rounds of the Six-Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue in Beijing in 2003 and 2004 and mediated two chairman's statements on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Being China's ambassador to Japan in 2004-07, he helped stabilize Sino-Japanese relations that soured due to former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to World War II criminals-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

Determined to Live

Mi Chengfu, 51, and Liu Hongkun, 45, who had been stranded for 20 days in mountains near Mianzhu City after the May 12 massive earthquake in southwest China's Sichuan Province, were successfully airlifted by rescuers on June 1. Among all injured survivors in the disaster, the two miners spent the longest time waiting for their eventual salvage.

After being informed, rescuers began to search for Mi and Liu on May 28 and located them on May 31. Before the successful airlift by a helicopter from the Hong Kong Government Flying Service, four similar attempts failed due to bad weather conditions.

Despite their access to water and some basic food, Liu attributed their survival to a strong will to live. "I never gave up," he said.