Chinese officials yesterday gave high praise to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) statement that both sides of the Taiwan Strait should implement the “one China” principle in their legal and political systems, and conduct cross-strait relations with the principle as its basis.

The remarks by Taiwan Affairs Office Director Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) came in the wake of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent reply to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) telegram congratulating him on his re-election as KMT chairman, in which Ma said: “Both sides of the Taiwan Strait reached a consensus in 1992 to express each other’s insistence on the ‘one China’ principle.”