Visiting Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan said in Shanghai Sunday that Taiwan and the mainland can jointly create peace, promote development and enjoy prosperity.

In a meeting with Chen Liangyu, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Shanghai municipal committee, Lien said, "The past cannot be changed. What can be changed is the future. To face up to the current days and jointly create the future is the most worthwhile direction that we strive for," he said.

Lien said relations across the Taiwan Straits are an issue that the entire region or even the world as a whole attaches great importance to.

The KMT has been devoting itself to pushing forward the establishment of "mutually beneficial and helpful, coexistent and win-win" relations across the Straits, he said.

Lien recalled the "1992 Consensus" reached between the two sides of the Straits and previous cross-Straits talks.

Chen Liangyu described Lien's visit as a "great event" in the development of cross-Straits relations, saying that Lien's meeting with Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, bears great historic and realistic significance.

Chen expressed the belief that the visit by Lien and the KMT delegation will definitely promote exchanges and cooperation between Shanghai and Taiwan, "which is conducive to the peaceful and stable development of cross-Straits relations."

Trade and economic cooperation and people-to-people exchanges between Shanghai and Taiwan have been active since the 1980s, and a growing number of Taiwan people have come to Shanghai to make investment, do business, study and buy real estate, making the metropolis the biggest residence of Taiwan people in the mainland.

(Xinhua News Agnecy May 2, 2005)