In February, director Chou Kung-hsin of the National Palace Museum in Taipei plans to visit the museum's counterpart in Beijing -- or, precisely speaking, its predecessor from where most of the popular Taipei museum's rich collection of Chinese objets d'art and artifacts originated.

The visit, if realised, would mark the highest level contact between the two museums in the 60 years since Taiwan and China split at the end of a civil war.

While there, Chou and her delegates "will take a look at the collection of the Beijing Palace Museum and explore the possibility of future cooperation," said Fung Ming-chu, spokeswoman for the Taipei museum.

Cheng Xinmiao, head of the Palace Museum in Beijing's Forbidden City, would reciprocate the visit in March, she said.

The planned exchange of visits would have been unimaginable less than a year ago when Taiwan was ruled by then-president Chen Shui-bian of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who repeatedly irked Beijing with provocative remarks about the island's sovereignty.

But the tensions across the Strait have eased dramatically since Ma Ying-jeou of the China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) took office in May.

He policy of drawing closer to China has seen the introduction of direct flights and measures aimed at attracting more Chinese tourists and easing restrictions on the island's China-bound investment.

"President Ma has made it clear that he wants to normalise ties between Taiwan and China," Fung said.

The attempt to promote bilateral cooperation seems to have got off a good start.

The Beijing museum has agreed to lend its Taipei counterpart 17 artifacts to enrich an exhibition slated for October on Emperor Yongzhen (1678-1735) of China's last imperial Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Fung said.

"The exhibit could also be jointly sponsored by the two sides, with details of the cooperation waiting further discussion," she said.

The 17 pieces will include portraits of the emperor dressed in Western clothes and as a Tibetan Buddhist monk.

"We have never had Yongzhen portraits such as these in our collection," Fung said, mindful of the frequent comparisons between the two museums.

The Taipei museum boasts more than 655,000 Chinese artifacts spanning 7,000 years from the prehistoric Neolithic period to the end of the Qing dynasty.

"The two museums are complementary," another official of the Taipei museum said on condition of anonymity.

But the notion that Taiwan would be lending anything to Beijing any time soon was met with derision by Fung, as there is no guarantee of its return.

There is no judicial agreement between the two sides that they would not attempt to keep any items on loan from the other, and the Taipei museum fears their artefacts could be held up by Chinese authorities who still regard the island as part of its territory and so claim ownership of the treasure trove.

"That is something we'll have to negotiate before our stuff can be displayed in Beijing," Fung said.

The National Palace Museum was founded in Beijing in 1925 and its treasures -- considered by former KMT Chiang Kai-shek to be a crucial symbol of China's political legacy -- were crated up and moved around China during World War II and, later, the civil war between the nationalist KMT and the communists.

Chiang's KMT troops were defeated by the communists led by Mao Zedong and fled to the island in 1949, where they established the rival Republic of China.

The collection was shipped across the Taiwan Strait to Taiwan in 1948-49.

"It is the legacy of the bloody civil war," said George Tsai, political science professor at the Chinese Culture University in Taipei.

Each year around 10,000 Chinese tourists visit the museum to admire the treasures they regard as having been stolen by the KMT government.

The Taipei museum draws more than 1.5 million tourists a year.

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