Taipei- Chinese President Hu Jintao, stepping up peace overtures towards Taiwan, will receive more than 100 mainland-based Taiwanese investors next week, the Central News Agency (CNA) said Thursday.

Hu will meet with the Taiwan investors in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on June 2, as the investors gather in the Chinese capital for a convention of Taiwan investors, CNA said.

The delegates of the convention are chairman of Taiwan businessmen's association in various regions in China.

CNA said Hu was expected to deliver a message to the Taiwanese people during his meeting with the investors. Hu last met with Taiwanese investors in 2003 when he received 150 of them.

Hu told them that China opposed Taiwan's seeking independence but welcomed Taiwan investors.

After nine years of strained relations, Taiwan and China have warmed to each other with Taiwan's new president Ma Ying-jeou seeking peace with Beijing and China agreeing to resume talks with Taipei.

On Wednesday, Hu received Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of Taiwan's pro- China ruling party Chinese Nationalist Party, in the highest-level contact between Taiwan and China since 1949.

Hu said cross-strait ties have entered a new stage and so long as Taipei accepts that there is one China and Taiwan is part of China, the two sides can discuss anything in the talks which will resume on June 11.

China and Taiwan split in 1949 after the end of the Chinese Civil War. In 1993, the two sides held their first dialogue and conducted dozens of talks under the dialogue's framework to settle legal disputes, fishing quarrels and the deportation of Chinese job seekers and plane hijackers.

China halted the dialogue in 1999 in retaliation for Taiwan's separatist moves, but with Ma's taking office on May 20, China has agreed to resume the talks on June 11 in Beijing. (dpa)