REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, SINGAPORE -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou shook hands and smiled broadly Saturday as they opened a historic summit, the first since the two sides' traumatic 1949 split following a civil war.

"No force can pull us apart," Xi told Ma as they opened the one-hour meeting in Singapore. "We are one family."

Ma responded by telling Xi the two sides should observe mutual respect after decades of hostility and rivalry, as they publicly declared their determination to "safeguard the peace of the Taiwan Straits" which separate them.

"Even though this is the first meeting, we feel like old friends. Behind us is history stretching for 60 years. Now before our eyes there are fruits of conciliation instead of confrontation," he said.

The pair opened the encounter with an extended handshake, beaming and waving to a huge pack of assembled media.

No agreements or joint statements are expected from the encounter between two sides that still refuse to formally recognise each other's legitimacy, and the meeting's lasting significance remains to be seen.

But the encounter is undeniably historic: the previous occasion was in 1945, when Communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong met with China's nationalist President Chiang Kai-shek in a failed reconciliation attempt.

The later Communist takeover forced Chiang's armies and about two million followers to flee to Taiwan, then a backwater island province, leaving a national rupture that has preoccupied both sides ever since.

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