I t was a highly unusual meeting. On the shores of Little Kinmen, a Taiwan-controlled islet just off the the coast of mainland China, two officials came face to face five weeks ago in an act of peacemaking. The Kinmen county magistrate met the mayor of Xiamen, the Chinese port across the strait, on a beach dotted with long, sharp spears embedded in the shallow ocean floor and, after a brief conversation, agreed to remove them.

Erected 53 years ago, the spears were a barricade to prevent amphibious Chinese assault crafts from landing on the island, which lies just 5km from Xiamen. Their removal would have been politically impossible even as recently as a year ago, but now the spears are making way for the crossing's first swimming competition this summer. “Kinmen had an iron curtain in the past because we surrounded ourselves with these iron bars,” said Li Zhu-feng, the county magistrate. “You don't let others in, but even worse is that you don't let yourself out. Now, the times are different.”

Just how different was underscored at the end of April. First, Beijing dropped its long-standing opposition to Taiwan participating in the World Heath Organisation's ruling body – setting the stage for Taipei to attend a United Nations meeting for the first time in almost 40 years. Then, the government-owned China Mobileproposed to take a 12 per cent stake in Far EasTone, a Taiwanese mobile operator, in the first mainland investment in a Taiwan-listed company.