Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits
People's Republic of China organization for dialog with Taiwan (Republic of China)
- 1 min read
- 3 chapters
Related on Lably
Through China
History
The ARATS was founded in 1991 by the Taiwan Affairs Office. The foundation's founding chairman was former Shanghai mayor Wang Daohan, honorary chairman Rong Yiren. The ARATS-SEF meeting in 1992 produced the 1992 Consensus. Negotiations with SEF stopped in 1999, and after Wang's death in 2005, no new chair was appointed until 2008. Following the election of Ma Ying-jeou to the presidency of Taiwan, talks between ARATS and SEF have restarted and progress was made in the areas of transport and economy such as the Three Links in 2008 and Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement in 2010. Chen Yunlin, who was formerly head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, was the head of ARATS from 2008 to 2013. He has met his counterpart Chiang Pin-kung in 2008.
In 2024, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council banned its citizens from working at China's Confucius Institute due to national security concerns.
Sign in to keep reading
2 more chapters are free with a Lably account.
Functions
The ARATS conducts cross-strait exchanges without the official imprimatur of the Chinese Communist Party or the People's Republic of China. Its counterpart in Taiwan is the Straits Exchange Foundation. Exchanges between ARATS and SEF have only occurred during Kuomintang presidencies, with no contact when the Democratic Progressive Party is in power.
List of presidents
The president of the ARATS tends to be a former ministerial-level director of the Taiwan Affairs Office.