BEIJING: China said on Saturday that communications with Taiwan had been suspended after the island’s new government failed to acknowledge the concept that there is only ‘one China’. Relations between the two sides have grown increasingly frosty since President Tsai Ing-wen won Taiwan’s leadership in January and took office in May, ending eight years of rapprochement. Beijing and Taipei have held regular official communications since 2014 but that has now stopped, according to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO). “The bilateral communication mechanism has been suspended,” TAO spokesman An Fengshan said on its website. Although Taiwan, whose official name is the Republic of China, is self-ruling after splitting with the mainland in 1949 following a civil war, it has never formally declared independence and Beijing still sees it as part of its territory awaiting reunification. Beijing said it had cut contact because Taiwan had refused to acknowledge the ‘1992 consensuses’ – a tacit agreement made between Chinese officials and the KMT that there is only ‘one China’. Tsai’s presidential predecessor Ma Ying-jeou recognised the consensus and oversaw an unprecedented thawing of ties from 2008 to when he left office in May.