Taiwan's new president took office on Tuesday with a historic offer to reopen dialogue with China, which claims the island as its territory, but pledged to maintain Taipei's existing self-rule and separate international profile.
Ma Ying-jeou, 57, the Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate and a former Taipei mayor, took over from Chen Shui-bian of the rival Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), beginning a four-year term after his landslide win in March.
Chen and Ma shook hands and walked, smiling, through a hallway lined with military officials to hand over power in the presidential office, where the Taiwan flag and a portrait of Sun Yat-sen, founder of modern China, hung in the background.
China has claimed Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong's Communists won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek's KMT Party fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its control, by force if necessary, if it declares independence.
The two sides have not talked since the 1990s.
"The normalisation of economic and cultural relations is the first step to a win-win solution," Ma said in his inaugural speech in a Taipei arena packed with 15,000 people, including 540 foreign dignitaries. "Accordingly, we are ready to resume consultations."
But in his speech, absent from Chinese state-run TV but aired on Phoenix TV, which is available to many urban viewers in China, Ma pledged to maintain the status quo by neither declaring independence nor seeking unification with China.
"Taiwan doesn't just want security and prosperity," he said. "It wants dignity. Only when Taiwan is no longer being isolated in the international arena can cross-Strait relations move forward with confidence."
China opposes Taiwan membership in the United Nations and other bodies that require statehood to join.
Ma said he would strengthen ties with major ally the United States and "cherish" relations with its existing 23 diplomatic allies, which Taiwan uses to push its agenda in international organisations dominated by China and its roughly 170 partners.
Taiwan's ties with Washington and Beijing frayed under Chen's hardline pro-independence policies since 2000.
