Taiwan's top China negotiator arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for historic talks which will be the first direct dialogue between the two sides in more than a decade.

Chiang Pin-kun, chairman of the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, landed at Beijing airport at 3:15 pm (0715 GMT) on Wednesday to kickstart four days of meetings between the two sides.

He was scheduled to hold talks with his Chinese counterpart Chen Yunlin from the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Thursday and will reportedly meet President Hu Jintao Friday.

Chiang, who is leading a 19-member delegation, earlier pledged to conduct the talks on a basis of "rationality, equal footing and dignity" to pursue peace and prosperity for both sides.

"We will put Taiwan and the people's interests first during the trip of cross-strait trust-building and negotiations," he said before departing from Taiwan.

The two sides are expected to strike a deal on launching weekend charter flights between China and Taiwan and allowing up to 3,000 Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan daily.

The moves will be a big step forward for Taiwan, which has banned direct trade and transport exchanges since the two rivals split in 1949 after a civil war.

The first top-level dialogue in more than ten years comes just weeks after China-friendly Ma Ying-jeou became president of the self-ruled island in May.

China and Taiwan held landmark talks in 1993 in Singapore but dialogue was subsequently suspended by Beijing.

China still claims Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification and has in the past threatened to invade if the island declares independence.

Those threats were ramped up during the eight-year reign of Ma's predecessor Chen Shui-bian, whose pro-independence rhetoric angered the mainland.

The rivalry between both sides has proven to be one of the most enduring threats to regional and global stability, with the two parties spending billions of dollars preparing for war against each other.

But Ma's election in May has seen a dramatic thaw in icy relations, culminating in Hu meeting the head of Ma's Kuomintang party, Wu Poh-hsiung, late last month, when they agreed to resume the talks.

Lai Shin-yuan, chairwoman of the Cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council, which charts Taiwan's mainland policy, hailed the trip as opening "a new page in history."

"We hope that Chiang and his delegation... will lay the basis to stabilise ties and normalise exchanges across the strait," she said.