TAIPEI - A Chinese airline will carry out the first medical emergency flight to Taiwan from Chinese mainland in a small breakthrough between the sides, Taiwan announced Wednesday.

A Taiwanese businessperson's 70-year-old relative, surnamed Chen, will fly from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou to Taipei on Thursday, accompanied by medical personnel from China, Taiwan's government said.

Chen suffered from a brain hemorrhage and was taken to the Dongguan City Hospital near Guangzhou last Friday, but relatives wanted a transfer to Taiwan, said Johnnason Liu, the spokesman for the Mainland Affairs Council - the government body in charge of relations with China.

Liu didn't say which airline was carrying out the flight.

Despite thriving commercial relations between the sides, Taiwan has long banned direct flights and direct maritime links on security grounds.

China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949 and the self-governing island fears that aircraft and ships from the mainland could be used as a cover for attack.

In June, the MAC announced it would allow medical emergency flights and direct cargo flights carrying equipment for Taiwanese factories on the mainland on a case-by-case basis.

The first direct cargo flight under the new guidelines flew between the island and Shanghai in July, carrying equipment for a chip factory established by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in the eastern Chinese city.