Chen Yunlin

Early life and career in Heilongjiang

Chen Yunlin was born in Heishan, Liaoning, in December 1941 and joined the Chinese Communist Party in May 1966. He graduated in pesticides from the soil chemistry department of Beijing Agricultural University in 1966 and from 1968 worked at the Yushutun chemical plant in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang, rising from technician to plant director. He went on to serve as deputy Party secretary and mayor of Qiqihar and deputy Party secretary of Heilongjiang province, and from 1987 was vice governor of Heilongjiang, later also sitting on the provincial Party standing committee.

In charge of Taiwan affairs

In January 1994 Chen was transferred from Heilongjiang to become deputy director of the CPC Central Committee's Taiwan Work Office and the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office; he was later promoted to director and remained at the office until 2008. A 2008 profile in People's Daily's Global People magazine said he had no foreign-affairs experience, that Taiwan was puzzled by the appointment, and that some mainland researchers believed the office needed an official with economic expertise as cross-strait economic ties grew.

In March 2005 Kuomintang vice chairman Chiang Pin-kung led a delegation to the mainland, and Chen met him in Beijing as head of the Taiwan affairs offices—the first such meeting between the two parties since 1949. According to the Taipei Times, Chen said Beijing was willing to talk with any Taiwanese representatives, groups or parties that accepted the “1992 Consensus” and opposed “Taiwan independence”; the talks covered imports of Taiwanese agricultural products and holiday and cargo charter flights, among other issues.

ARATS president and the Chen–Chiang talks

After Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in 2008, the two semi-official bodies resumed talks suspended for nearly a decade, and Chen became president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS). In June 2008 he met Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Chiang Pin-kung at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, and the two sides signed documents on weekend charter flights and mainland tourism to Taiwan.

From 3 to 7 November 2008 Chen visited Taiwan—the first ARATS president to do so since the two bodies began talks in 1992. On 4 November he and Chiang signed agreements on air transport, shipping, postal services and food safety at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, opening direct air and sea links and direct mail; on 6 November Ma Ying-jeou received him at the Taipei Guest House. Mainland state media covered the visit favourably. In Taiwan, the Democratic Progressive Party and independence groups protested wherever he went; the Taipei Times reported that police set up checkpoints between the airport and the hotel and kept out vehicles bearing Republic of China flags or anti-Chen banners, and that a DPP “siege” protest drew tens of thousands on the day of his meeting with Ma.

In April 2013 former commerce minister Chen Deming succeeded him as ARATS president. In a 2018 tribute, Chen Yunlin wrote that during the four-plus years in which he and Chiang led the two bodies, they held eight rounds of talks and signed 18 agreements. After Chiang died in December 2018, Chen travelled to Taipei in a personal capacity to pay his respects.