BOAO - CHINESE President Hu Jintao met here on Saturday with Taiwan's vice president-elect Vincent Siew, according to a pool report, in the highest-level contact ever between the two sides.

The meeting is being viewed as the first major test of the ability of the incoming administration in Taiwan to improve relations with China, from which it split in 1949 after a civil war.

Mr Siew, a former premier, has not yet assumed office, and was to meet Mr Hu as head of a Taiwan delegation visiting the southern Chinese island of Hainan for a regional forum. -- AFP