BEIJING, May 5 (Xinhuanet) --
Chairman of the People First Party (PFP) in Taiwan James C. Y. Soong left Taipei
at about 9:20 a.m. Thursday to embark on a nine-day visit to the mainland,
according to sources in Taipei.
The first stop of the PFP
delegation will be Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
The itinerary of Soong and his
delegation will also include Nanjing, once capital of the Kuomintang-ruled
Republic of China before 1949; Shanghai, China's biggest financial and trade
hub; Xiangtan, central China's Hunan Province, where Soong was born; and the
Chinese capital Beijing.
Before leaving Taipei, Soong said
at Taipei's Taoyuan Airport that he, with a high degree of sincerity, hopes to
build a bridge of mutual trust, cooperation and communication.
"The widest gap between the two
sides across the Taiwan Straits is not geographical but psychological one,"
Soong said.
He said he hopes the PFP's
"Journey of Work" will re-open the chapter of mutual trust across the Straits in
the new era.
Soong, at the invitation of the
Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and its General Secretary Hu
Jintao, is scheduled to meet Hu during his stay in Beijing.
The
PFP chairman is also expected to visit the mausoleum of Huangdi, who was
regarded as the common ancestor of the Chinese, near Xi'an, pay homage to Dr.
Sun Yat-sen, founding father of the Chinese Kuomintang, at Sun's mausoleum in
Nanjing, and deliver a speech at the prestigious Qinghua University.