Wang Daohan (汪道涵), is the current president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS).

Wang was born in China's Anhui Province in 1915 and joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1938. During his early career within the government of the People's Republic of China, he focused on trade and investment issues. In 1965 he was worked as deputy minister of the State Commission for Foreign Economic Relations with Foreign Countries and in 1979 he was appointed vice-chair of the State Foreign Investment Commission and vice-chair of the State Import-Export Commission. Later Wang came to greater prominence when, after a year as vice-mayor, he was made mayor of Shanghai in 1981. As mayor, Wang contributed to the success of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms by actively encouraging foreign investment and joint ventures. When he retired in 1985, Wang convinced Party officials to name his protegé Jiang Zemin as successor.

On 16 December 1991 Wang was named president of ARATS, a semi-official organization created to correspond with the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF). The following year Wang and SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu held preliminary talks in Hong Kong which resulted in the so-called "1992 Consensus" and facilitated negotiations of practical matters. The content and the existence of this "1992 Consensus" is still widely disputed. In April 1993, Koo and Wang met in Singapore to hold the first formal discussions between Taipei and Beijing since 1949. A second round of talks followed in 1998, in Shanghai, but no further talks have taken place since. Beijing called off talks in 1999, after ROC President Lee Teng-hui proposed his two-states theory .

References

• "Economic Policy after the 16th Party Congress"
• Same Bed, Different Dreams
• AsiaWeek "Who's Who"