'No force can separate us,' Xi says as he meets Taiwan's ex-leader

Chinese President welcomes delegation led by Ma, who says he’s on journey to calm tensions

- 

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on April 10 that "external interference" would not stop China from unifying with Taiwan, as he met the island's former leader in a rare display of cross-strait dialogue.

Taiwan's former president Ma Ying-jeou is in China as part of what he has called a "journey of peace" to calm tensions with Beijing, which regards the self-governing Taiwan as its territory to be reunified with it. Taiwan rejects China's sovereignty claims.

Mr Xi welcomed a delegation headed by Mr Ma to Beijing on the afternoon of April 10, Chinese and Taiwanese media reported, in a rare meeting between current or former leaders in Beijing and Taipei, and the first since a landmark summit between the two men in 2015 when Mr Ma was still in office.

"The Chinese nation has written the indivisible history of both sides of the Taiwan Strait and engraved the fact that our compatriots... are connected by blood," Mr Xi said in footage of the meeting broadcast by Taiwan's TVBS News.