Past three Straits Forums made strides in developing ongoing partnership

Development parks for Taiwan farmers

Fujian province now has six national development parks to help farmers from Taiwan explore mainland markets.

The six parks are respectively located in Zhangpu county in Zhangzhou, the town of Yongfu in Zhangping, Xianyou county in Putian, Qingliu county in Sanming as well as the counties of Fuqing and Hui'an in Quanzhou.

Fujian has more of these development parks than any other province or region on the mainland.

The parks have become a platform to boost cross-Straits cooperation in agriculture.

Financial cooperation

Fujian showed initiative when it allowed eight Taiwanese enterprises to become shareholders of seven of the rural cooperative financial institutions in the province.

Xiamen Bank is the first bank on the Chinese mainland to be jointly funded with investment from Taiwan. Insurance companies with funding from Taiwan, such as Jun Long Life Insurance Co and Fubon Property Insurance Co, have already started business in Xiamen.

Securities firms from Taiwan, such as President Securities Corp, have also already set up shop in Fujian.

A financial service center is also now under construction in Xiamen. It will one day act as a springboard for financial companies from Taiwan to expand their business on the mainland.

Convenient transport across Straits

The "mini three links" mechanism was set up in 2001 to allow direct ferry services between the coastal cities in Fujian province and Taiwan's offshore islands Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu.

Statistics show that, at the end of last year, people from both sides of the Straits have made more than 8 million trips through the "mini three links" mechanism, which became a golden route to connect the mainland and Taiwan.

In 2011, the number of trips made by passengers reached 1.5 million, almost 60 times the figure in 2001.

In addition, the number of passenger flights between the mainland and Taiwan has increased substantially, and now more than 550 flights travel across the Straits every week.

The air ticket price, on the other hand, was reduced to meet the need of passengers through the joint efforts of civil aviation authorities on both sides.

More mainland tourists are allowed to visit Taiwan

In 2011, tourists from the mainland were allowed to visit Taiwan on an individual basis for the first time, whereas they had been limited to traveling in tour groups in the past.

The first batch of mainland cities for the trial tourism program includes Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen in Fujian.

Meanwhile, residents in Fujian are allowed to visit Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu as individual tourists.

In April this year, Taiwan opened individual tourism to six more mainland cities -Tianjin, Nanjing, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Chengdu - to encourage more mainland tourists to visit the island for exchanges.

According to customs statistics in Fujian province, more than 600,000 people traveled to Taiwan last year through ports in the province, which is closer to Taiwan than any other on the mainland .

(China Daily 06/18/2012 page12)