The Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (海峡两岸关系协会, Hǎixiá Liǎng'àn Guānxì Xiéhuì), commonly abbreviated ARATS or by its Chinese acronym Haixiehui (海协会), was founded in Beijing on 16 December 1991 under the authority of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO). Its creation was a direct institutional response to Taipei's establishment one month earlier of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF, 海峡交流基金会) under the Mainland Affairs Council. Because the People's Republic of China does not recognise the Republic of China government on Taiwan as a sovereign counterpart, and because Beijing rejects state-to-state contact across the Strait, ARATS was constituted as a nominally civilian "people's organisation" (民间团体) able to negotiate functional matters without conferring any implication of sovereign equality. In practice, ARATS is funded by the State Council, staffed and supervised by the TAO, and its leadership appointments are vetted by the Chinese Communist Party's Central Leading Group for Taiwan Work.
Procedurally, ARATS operates through a paired-channel architecture in which it serves as the mainland mirror of SEF. When either side wishes to negotiate an agreement on consular-type matters, trade, transport, judicial assistance, postal exchange, or repatriation, communications are routed via the ARATS–SEF channel rather than through ministry-to-ministry contact. Authorisation flows from the TAO to ARATS and, on the Taiwan side, from the Mainland Affairs Council to SEF. Working-level talks produce draft texts; principals (the ARATS President and SEF Chairman) sign agreements at formal summits; and implementation reverts to the relevant line ministries on each side. This "white-glove" mechanism (白手套) preserves the fiction of non-governmental contact while delivering the binding force of inter-agency arrangements.
The legal-political ballast for this format is the so-called 1992 Consensus (九二共识), a contested formula arising from ARATS–SEF exchanges in Hong Kong in November 1992. Beijing interprets it as mutual acknowledgment that both sides belong to "one China"; successive Kuomintang administrations in Taipei interpreted it as "one China, respective interpretations" (一中各表); the Democratic Progressive Party rejects the formula altogether. On this foundation, the first Wang–Koo Talks (汪辜会谈) between ARATS President Wang Daohan (汪道涵) and SEF Chairman Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) were held in Singapore from 27–29 April 1993, producing four functional agreements on document verification, registered mail, and the institutionalisation of further contacts.
Cross-Strait dialogue through ARATS reached its zenith between 2008 and 2016 under ARATS President Chen Yunlin (陈云林, 2008–2013) and Chen Deming (陈德铭, 2013–) and their SEF counterparts Chiang Pin-kung and Lin Join-sane. Eleven Chiang–Chen summits produced 23 agreements, including the Cross-Strait Air Transport Agreement (2008), the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement (2009), and the landmark Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed in Chongqing on 29 June 2010. Following the inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen in May 2016 and her refusal to endorse the 1992 Consensus, Beijing suspended the institutionalised ARATS–SEF channel; no plenary meetings or new agreements have been concluded since.
ARATS should be distinguished from the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, which is its supervising organ and the policy principal, and from the CCP Central Committee's Taiwan Work Office (with which the State Council TAO shares personnel under the "one institution, two names" formula). ARATS is the negotiating vehicle, not the policymaker. It is likewise distinct from the People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries or other united-front bodies, because ARATS uniquely handles the cross-Strait file and possesses a designated counterpart in SEF. Track-II dialogues run by Chinese academic institutions are not ARATS channels, even when ARATS personnel attend.
Several controversies attach to the institution. Critics in Taipei have long argued that the ARATS–SEF format structurally disadvantages Taiwan by denying it state-to-state standing while binding it to substantive obligations; the Sunflower Movement of March–April 2014, which occupied Taiwan's Legislative Yuan to block the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement negotiated through this channel, crystallised this critique. The death of long-serving ARATS President Chen Yunlin's predecessor Wang Daohan in 2005 left the post vacant for three years, signalling Beijing's then-frozen posture. Since 2019, when Xi Jinping's 2 January speech reframed the 1992 Consensus as encompassing "one country, two systems for Taiwan," ARATS's traditional ambiguity has eroded, and the body has been reduced to issuing statements rather than negotiating texts.
For the working practitioner, ARATS remains the indispensable analytical reference point for any cross-Strait functional engagement. Desk officers tracking Taiwan policy in Washington, Tokyo, Brussels, or Canberra monitor ARATS statements as authoritative TAO signalling on operational matters short of military posture. Should Beijing wish to test a diplomatic opening with a future Taipei administration, restoration of ARATS–SEF contact would be the leading indicator; conversely, its continued dormancy registers the depth of the current freeze. Understanding ARATS — its origins, its paired architecture with SEF, and its subordination to the TAO and the Party's Taiwan Work apparatus — is foundational to reading the cross-Strait relationship.
Example
In June 2010, ARATS President Chen Yunlin and SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in Chongqing, the most consequential cross-Strait pact concluded through the ARATS–SEF channel.