Just three months into the job, the President of Taiwan believes that he has completed the greatest achievement of his entire term in office.

President Ma Ying-jeou (pronounced “Ing-jeeo”) has moved his island more swiftly along the road to peace with the Communist leadership in Beijing than his predecessors managed in eight decades.

His administration has reached agreement with Beijing allowing regular direct flights for the first time in 60 years across the narrow straits that divide the bitter foes. Two pandas are due in Taiwan within a week, an idiosyncratic Chinese gesture of diplomatic goodwill. Direct shipping and daily flights could begin by the end of the year.

“Cross-straits peace will be remembered as the most important accomplishment of my administration,” President Ma said in his first interview with a British newspaper since he swept to victory in March, becoming only the third popularly elected leader of a Chinese territory.

A politician who displays all the caution of a Harvard-educated law scholar, the President can also show pride. “After 80 years of struggle between the Kuomintang [Chinese Nationalist Party] and the Communist Party of China, we are finally finding the wisdom to engage each other in peace,” he said.

If he has really succeeded in seeing off the threat of war in one of Asia's hottest flashpoints, that will indeed be no small achievement. Since the Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island in 1949 with his armies after defeat by the Communist forces of Mao Zedong, Beijing has claimed Taiwan as a renegade province.

For its part, Taiwan at first insisted that it would recover the mainland and then, when that ambition became nothing more than hubris, said that it wanted reunification on its own terms.

The islanders have drifted swiftly and steadily away from the mainland. Many regard themselves first and foremost as Taiwanese. It is a shift that worries Beijing's Communist leadership. They have long insisted that independence is out of the question and that they will recover the errant province, by force if necessary.

With the United States committed by treaty to come to Taiwan's defence, the threat of war across the narrow straits has loomed several times, most recently in 1995 and 1996 when China carried out “missile tests” in waters off the island in a show of force.

President Ma recognises that there are those in Taiwan who see him as too conciliatory. But he is firm, emphasising that 80 per cent of the island's 24 million people support his policy to maintain the ambiguous status quo and the peace rather than hazard independence or reunification and possible war.

“As long as the leaders have the confidence and sincerity to improve relations I think we can really change the course of history,” he said. He does not mince words in assessing his rivals in Beijing. These are leaders who rule a single-party state and are nervous about a democratic Taiwan.

“When they look at Taiwan they always have a sense of uncertainty. But democracy is uncertain. You never know who is going to be the next president,” he said.

“So they are afraid that if somebody else becomes president four years later will the policy continue?”

The new President is confident that the peace process he has initiated can outlast him. “The foundation of the policy to seek reconciliation is not based on an individual, it is based on the common needs of the two sides.” He dismisses criticisms that he may be overly optimistic in his policy of rapprochement, saying that the initial fragile trust between the two sides is just a start.

He knows that a peace accord to put a formal end to a decades-old state of war is still a long way off.

“We can't be so naive to assume that all differences will disappear. After all there are more than 1,000 missiles targeted against Taiwan.” And President Ma clearly has reservations about the Communist system, not hesitating to criticise Beijing.

The recent Olympic Games were a splendid start that highlighted Beijing's shortcomings. “For all those mainland Chinese, this is a moment of glory and satisfaction,” he said. “There is still a long way to go in terms of other values like freedom, rule of law, democracy and protection of human rights.

“So we certainly hope that the Olympic Games serve as the beginning of a new era for the Chinese as a whole.”

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