April 2005

Lien Chan, then-chairman of the Kuomintang, visits the mainland at the invitation of Hu Jintao, then general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. The "common prospects for peaceful cross-Straits development" are written into the political guidelines of the KMT after the meeting.

May 2008

Hu Jintao meets Wu Po-hsiung, then-chairman of the KMT, in Beijing. Hu urges the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation to resume talks as soon as possible.

June 12-14, 2008

The association and the foundation resume talks in Beijing after nine years. The bodies are channels for high-level cross-Straits dialogue, halted in 1999 due to the then-Taiwan authorities' pro-independence activities.

July 4, 2008

Weekend charter flights across the Straits begin, with 760 people forming the first tourist group from the mainland to Taiwan since 1949. Direct shipping, air and postal services between the mainland and Taiwan are launched on Dec 15.

December 2008

The mainland gives two pandas - Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, both aged 4 - to Taiwan. Hu Jintao had promised to loan the pandas during his 2008 talks with Wu Po-hsiung.

June 2010

The mainland and Taiwan sign the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, a trade deal aimed at reducing tariffs and commercial barriers.

June 28, 2011

Some 290 people from the mainland travel to Taiwan after the ban on individual mainland tourists to Taiwan is lifted. Previously, people from the mainland had only been permitted to travel in tour groups and follow pre-set routes.

(China Daily USA 06/14/2013 page1)