2005 Journey To Mainland China
On April 26, 2005, Lien Chan traveled to mainland China to meet with the leaders of the Communist Party of China. His meeting with CPC leader Hu Jintao was the highest level exchange since Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong met in Chongqing on August 28, 1945, to celebrate the victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War and discuss a possible truce in the impending Chinese Civil War.
On April 27, Lien visited the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing. On April 28, he arrived in Beijing and visited the Palace Museum.
On the afternoon of April 29, he met with President of the People's Republic of China Hu Jintao (in his capacity as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China) and they reached a 5-point consensus, reaffirming that Taiwan is part of China and that the two parties would work together to prevent formal Taiwan independence.
Before meeting with Hu on April 29, Lien Chan delivered a speech at Peking University, which his 96-year-old mother Zhao Lankun attended nearly 80 years ago. On April 30, he headed to his birthplace Xi'an. He revisited Houzaimen Primary School, which he attended 60 years ago. He also visited the Great Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor. Early on May 1, he paid homage to his grandmother's tomb near Qingliangsi.
Later that day, Lien arrived in Shanghai, where he attended a banquet hosted by Shanghai CPC Party Secretary General Chen Liangyu. On May 2, he met with Wang Daohan, the 90-year-old chairman of the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, and the representatives of Taiwanese businesspeople. He returned to Taiwan at noon on May 3.
In December 2010, Lien was awarded the Confucius Peace Prize in China, which was instituted as a reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo. Lien's office said to the Taipei Times: “We’ve never heard of such an award and of course Mr Lien has no plans to accept it.”
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