TAIPEI, Taiwan - The leader of Taiwan's biggest opposition party would have once been jailed or executed for what he plans to do Tuesday: fly to rival China for a weeklong tour that's supposed to climax in a handshake with the Chinese president.

Lien Chan's trip will be the first time in 56 years that the leader of his once staunchly anti-Communist Nationalist Party sets foot in China - just 100 miles west of this leaf-shaped island.

His tour will mark one of the biggest political ironies in the past decade of dizzying change in Taiwan, one of Asia's youngest and most dynamic democracies. The trip might also calm tensions across the Taiwan Strait, where a war could quickly involve U.S. forces.

Lien's Nationalists ruled the mainland until 1949, when Mao Zedong's Communist guerrillas won a bloody civil war. The Nationalists moved their government to Taiwan, where they vowed to fight their way back to the mainland, oust the Communists and unify China.

They ruled Taiwan for five decades, often using brutal, authoritarian tactics to root out suspected Communist sympathizers. Teachers, lawyers, doctors and other intellectuals were jailed or shot for allegedly supporting Mao and his "red bandits." Travel to China was banned as well as books, magazines and newspapers from the mainland.

Two major changes happened in the 1980s: Taiwan began relaxing restrictions on trade and travel to China, and the island became more democratic, causing the Nationalists' iron grip to weaken. They eventually lost the presidency in the 2000 election to Chen Shui-bian, a feisty lawyer who once defended dissidents jailed by the Nationalists.

Chen's once-banned Democratic Progressive Party never shared the Nationalists' dream of Taiwan-China unification. Chen believes only Taiwanese voters should decide the island's future and formal independence should be an option - a view that makes the Nationalists and Communists bristle.

The unification issue has helped unite the former battlefield foes. Chinese leaders have refused to speak to Chen, but they're welcoming Nationalist Chairman Lien - the lesser of two evils in their eyes.

Lien, who will head a 30-member delegation, said he will meet Chinese leaders as a private citizen but with hopes for nurturing "an atmosphere for reconciliation and peace dialogue."

The president has warned Lien against playing into the hands of the Communists and threatened to charge him with treason if he signs any deals without government authorization.

But over the weekend Chen also said Lien could use the journey to "toss a stone to test the water" of reconciliation.