In October 2017, Tsai Ing-wen expressed hopes that both sides would restart their cross-strait relations after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and argued that new practices and guidelines governing mutual interaction should be examined. Regarding the old practices, Tsai stated that “If we keep sticking to these past practices and ways of thinking, it will probably be very hard for us to deal with the volatile regional situations in Asia”. Relations with the Mainland had stalled since Tsai took office in 2016.