Principle; this was not well received by the PRC and official dialogue was suspended. On 29 April 2005, Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan travelled to Beijing and met with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao, the first meeting between the leaders of the two parties since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. According to US sources, Hu said in 2008 that talks between Taiwan and the mainland should be restored on the basis of the 1992 Consensus. Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT fully endorsed the 1992 Consensus, though he stated that there would be neither unification nor declaration of independence during his presidency. After becoming elected president in 2008, talks between the ROC and PRC resumed. Direct weekend charter flights between Taiwan and mainland China began in July 2008, and the first direct daily charter flights took off in December 2008. On 11 February 2014, Mainland Affairs Council head Wang Yu-chi travelled to Nanjing and met with Taiwan Affairs Office head Zhang Zhijun, the first meeting between high-ranking officials from either side. Zhang paid a reciprocal visit to Taiwan and met Wang on 25 June 2014, making Zhang the first minister-level PRC official to ever visit Taiwan. On 7 November 2015, Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping had a face-to-face meeting in Singapore, the first time two ROC and PRC leaders had met since 1949. During the 2016 Taiwanese presidential election, Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP initially pursued a similar strategy as Chen Shui-bian, but after winning the election she received a similarly frosty reception from the PRC. In 2019, Tsai, who supported the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, pledged that as long as she is Taiwan's president, she will never accept "one country, two systems", and that since the PRC equated the 1992 Consensus with "one country, two systems", she could not accept the 1992 Consensus as well. Foreign relations Before 1928, the foreign policy of Republican China was complicated by a lack of internal unity—competing centres of power all claimed legitimacy. This situation changed after the defeat of the Peiyang Government by the Kuomintang (KMT), which led to widespread diplomatic recognition of the Republic of China. After the KMT's retreat to Taiwan, most countries, notably the countries in the Western Bloc, continued to maintain relations with the ROC, but recognition gradually eroded and many countries switched recognition to the People's Republic of China in the 1970s. On