Beijing will lend 29 Qing Dynasty relics to Taiwan's National Palace Museum for a joint exhibit this fall, state media said Feb. 16, in the first major cultural exchange since the two sides split amid civil war six decades ago.

The official China Daily said authorities agreed to provide several portraits of the Qing Dynasty's 18th-century Emperor Yongzheng from the Forbidden City, or Beijing Palace Museum, for a three-month exhibition beginning in October in Taipei.

In the waning stages of the Chinese civil war, the forces of Nationalist strongman Chiang Kai-shek moved 600,000 items of Chinese calligraphy, porcelain, bronzes, landscape paintings, portraiture and figurines from the imperial collection in Beijing to Taiwan.

The massive art transfer created the world's greatest museum of Chinese art in Taiwan at the expense of its counterpart on the mainland.