James Soong, who heads the People First Party, is the second leading Taiwanese politician to visit the Chinese mainland as part of steps towards reconciliation.

“Taiwan independence will bring war and disaster,” Mr Soong told a group of Taiwanese business executives in Shanghai. “We want factories and markets, not battlefields.”

Mr Soong’s visit to China, which will culminate in a meeting with Mr Hu on Thursday, marks the latest move in a campaign by China to isolate President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan, whose party supports formal independence for the self-governing democratic island.

Taiwan and China should “replace enmity with dialogue”, Mr Soong said. Such remarks have enraged Mr Chen, who has endorsed Mr Soong’s trip and asked him to issue a secret message to Beijing. Analysts say that Mr Chen has almost certainly draughted a form of words aimed at reconciliation without abandoning his dream of independence.

China claims Taiwan as its territory and has threatened to attack if it makes its de facto independence permanent. Yet in a matter of weeks China has turned the diplomatic stalemate between Beijing and the island on its head. First, Mr Hu held a historic meeting with Lien Chan, the leader of the Nationalists, whose predescessor fled to Taiwan in 1949 after defeat by Communist forces. Days later, Mr Soong will be in China for his own scheduled handshake with Mr Hu.

The meetings are a political coup for Beijing, which for a decade had appeared to be the main obstacle to peace, and weeks ago was the target of international opprobrium for passing a law mandating the invasion of Taiwan if it declares independence. Now it is Beijing and not Taiwan that has seized the initiative, and Taiwan’s President appears to be almost isolated.

His popularity rating has dropped, as the Taiwanese have watched Mr Lien return from China with offers of gifts of pandas and cuts in fruit import tariffs. Mr Chen is struggling to mend splits in his Democratic Progressive Party, whose more radical members fear that he is compromising.

“The Republic of China is an independent country, and sovereignty belongs to Taiwan’s 23 million people,” Mr Chen told his party faithful at the weekend, emphasising the island’s official name, by which the Nationalists ruled all China until the 1949 Communist victory.

Mr Chen faces a dilemma: most Taiwanese want better ties with their neighbour, but Taiwan is so diplomatically isolated that Frank Hsieh, the Prime Minister, could not obtain a visa to visit Germany, Taiwan newspapers said yesterday. If Mr Chen kow-tows to Beijing, he could lose his pro- independence support base. Much will depend on what Mr Soong tells Mr Hu.

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