Often overused, the word “historic” richly applies to the upcoming meeting between Xi Jinping, China’s president, and Ma Ying-jeou, his Taiwanese counterpart. The last time leaders of China’s communist party and the nationalist Kuomintang met was in 1945 when Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek failed to bridge their differences at the end of the second world war. The two have been embroiled ever since in a war of words, and occasionally gunfire, across the Taiwan Strait to which the KMT fled after the communist revolution of 1949.

Saturday’s meeting, which will take place in Singapore, is thus a huge milestone. Yet it raises as many questions as hopes. It is not difficult to see what is concentrating Beijing’s mind on Taiwan. China fears that the island it regards as a province is likely next January to elect a president from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and that it may also win a majority in the Taiwan legislature. Polls suggest that both these outcomes are likely, potentially creating Taiwan’s most independence-leaning political culture in decades.

The biggest question is whether Mr Xi can shift the electoral mood towards Taiwan’s governing KMT, which is relatively pro-China and opposes independence. If Mr Xi genuinely hopes to achieve this, he would need to make conciliatory gestures — even concessions — towards the very independence-minded voters that Beijing so strongly opposes. This makes it an assignment of the utmost delicacy.