TAIPEI (Reuters) - China has rebuffed a request by Taiwan for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou to meet at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing, saying it was "inappropriate", a Taiwan official said on Friday.
China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since Nationalist forces, defeated by the Communists, fled to the island at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. China considers Taiwan a renegade province and has never ruled out the use of force to bring it under its control.