Yok Mu-ming, chairman of Taiwan's New Party, told students at Renmin University of China in Beijing Tuesday morning that he will bring China's national spirit back home after his trip.
  
"We have a deep affection for the millennia-old nation, but the millennia-old spirit embedded in the nation crystallizes numerous people's blood and tears," he said.
  
Yok said he and his party's members would strive to be "happy and upright Chinese," adding: "The party will devote itself to the country's future reunification."

Yok is heading a 30-member delegation on an eight-day trip to the mainland to commemorate the 60th anniversary of China's victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. They arrived in the capital on Sunday morning, after visiting Guangzhou, Nanjing and Dalian.

Yesterday they met Liu Qi, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and held a symposium with the mainland-based Cross-Straits Relations Research Center.

Liu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, extended a warm welcome to them and urged people on both sides of the Straits to carry forward a national spirit centered on patriotism and to strive to rejuvenate the Chinese nation.

Yok told the symposium that, under current circumstances, it is necessary to view cross-Straits issues in a broader perspective.

"There's an urgent need to elevate patriotism. We must resolutely safeguard the dignity of the Chinese nation and never tolerate external forces challenging and threatening its interests," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency July 12, 2005)