Kuomintang (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung arrived Beijing on Monday noon, beginning an eight-day visit on the mainland.

Wang Yi, director of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, welcomed him at the airport.

Wu will visit Beijing, then the southwestern Chongqing municipality, Hangzhou City of the eastern Zhejiang Province and Nanjing of the eastern Jiangsu Province, said KMT spokesman Lee Chien-jung earlier at Taipei.

Leaders of the KMT and the Communist Party of China (CPC) are scheduled to review the development of exchanges and interactions between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits in the past year, he said.

They are expected to reach a common understanding on how to promote cross-Strait relations in the future.

Wu will attend activities to remember Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a founder of the Kuomintang, or the Nationalist Party of China, in Nanjing on June 1, Lee added.

Wu is in the mainland at the invitation of Hu Jintao, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

(Xinhua News Agency May 25, 2009)