President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan and President Xi Jinping of China met in Singapore on Saturday, marking the first meeting between the two sides’ leaders in the 66 years since Mao Zedong’s Communist forced drove Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government from mainland China in 1949, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a meeting with reporters earlier in the week Ma said the dialogue aimed to preserve the status quo in which there is no unification, no outright declaration of Taiwan’s formal independence and no military threats. Ma’s engagement policies, while popular with some in the business community, have cost his Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, popular support in Taiwan, now a robust democracy.