During the Mao Zedong era, China had two distinct policies towards Taiwan. From 1949 to the early 1950s, Mao was determined to liberate Taiwan through force. From the early 1950s to the late 1970s, China, though still mainly basing its Taiwan policy on liberation through force, started to propose negotiations with Taiwan. However, Taiwan dismissed these initiatives as propaganda. Nevertheless, the two sides did try to contact each other very cautiously through secret channels, and worked out some tentative proposals and arrangements for reunification, which were similar to the “one country, two systems” formula presently proposed by China. This process, however, ceased when the Cultural Revolution began in China in 1966.

From the late 1970s, when the Deng Xiaoping era started, Beijing no longer talked about liberating Taiwan through force. It formed a new policy for “peaceful reunification”. Subsequently, it launched a series of peaceful initiatives towards Taiwan. In January 1979, the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC) sent “A Message to Compatriots in Taiwan”. On 30 September 1981, Ye Jianying, chairman of the Standing Committee of the NPC, announced a nine-point proposal for solving the Taiwan issue.

These various statements were more conciliatory and offered more specific concessions to Taiwan than was the case previously. Apart from the proposed “three direct links and four exchanges” 3 to be established before political negotiations would take place, Beijing also guaranteed in these statements that, after reunification, the present economic and social system, the armed forces, economic and cultural relations with foreign countries, and the way of life, would remain unchanged. It also appealed for an end to the military confrontation across the Taiwan Strait. On the same day that “A Message to Compatriots in Taiwan” was issued, China's Defence Ministry announced the end of the two-decade-long symbolic bombardment of Kinmen Island and other offshore islands. Beijing also began to reduce its troop concentrations in Fujian province facing Taiwan.