Beijing  - Taiwan's ruling party chief Wu Poh-hsiung described Taiwan as belonging to the Chinese nation and the two "closely tied by blood," during his visit to Nanjing Tuesday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT), is in China for the highest ranking meeting between Beijing and Taipei in more than 60 years.

On Tuesday, Wu paid homage to Dr Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum, China's founding father, in Nanjing and said in a speech there that both the mainland and Taiwan belong to the Chinese nation, and are "closely tied by blood," which no one could obliterate.

He laid a floral wreath to the sitting statue of Sun, a founder of Kuomintang, or the Nationalist party of China, who died in 1925, and observed one minute of silence in reverence.

Wu landed Monday in Nanjing with a 16-member delegation at the invitation of Hu Jintao in his capacity as secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On Wednesday, Wu plans to hold talks with Hu.

In a major policy shift, Taiwan's new President Ma Ting-jeou has offered to seek peace with China and has asked Beijing to resume the dialogue which began in 1993 but was halted by China in 1995 in retaliation against what it saw as Taiwan's moves towards formal independence.

Wu is expected to discuss Ma's proposal for launching cross-strait weekend charter flights and opening the door to Chinese tourists, scheduled to start on July 4.

The weekend charter flights will be expanded to daily charter flights and eventually become regular flights.

Wu is scheduled to visit Shanghai on Thursday to meet with Taiwan investors and then travel on to Yixing, Jiangsu province, to attend a prayer meeting for China's earthquake victims.

The May 12 magnitude-8 Sichuan quake has killed up to 80,000, and left 5.7 million homeless. (dpa)