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Coastal cities help build ties across the Straits

By Xie Yu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-26 08:15

Following the end of China's civil war in 1949, shipping channels, flights and postal services across the Taiwan Straits were diverted through Hong Kong or Macao.

Last year, however, residents from both sides were given the green light to exchange visits.

A 30-minute boat ride is all that separates the two and, in Kinmen, tourists can board a flight to other areas of Taiwan.

It has seen cross-Straits tourism soar, with boats to Kinmen carrying more than 3,000 passengers every day, while sightseers from both sides can also charter private vessels at will to cross the Straits.

Mainland travel agents welcomed almost 40,000 Taiwanese from January to May, while their counterparts across the water entertained more than 35,000 mainlanders.

The most popular souvenirs for tourists in Xiamen are said to be candies, while those who visit Kinmen often snap up kitchen knives made from old bombs shells.

By April this year, Fujian had six passenger ship routes and 12 cargo ship routes to Taiwan's Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu ports, transporting 4.2 million people and 6 million tons of goods, said the provincial Taiwan Affairs Office.

In Quanzhou, another coastal city, the biggest mainland petrochemical industrial park exclusively for Taiwan enterprises is under construction.

"Taiwan businessmen started to contact us in 2001 about investing. But they all decided it was too risky at that time, when the cross-Straits situation was still delicate," said You Zuyong, Party secretary for the city's Quangang district, where the park will be built.

"It would be hard to imagine the situation if they were not in Fujian then. There were military maneuvers and the armed forces were constantly being reallocated to different parts of the coastline."

Just two weeks after the State Council approved the HEZ plan to boost development of the Haixi region, eight leading Taiwan-based petrochemical firms met with the Quanzhou municipal government to sign a $6-billion framework agreement for the park.

The petrochemicals industry has matured in Taiwan but it has also been saturated. In Fujian there are opportunities to expand, thanks to the area's abundance of space and links to a large hinterland, said You.

By April, Taiwan companies had invested more than $20 billion in Fujian industries, including electronics, manufacturing and petrochemicals.

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It became the biggest import market and the mainland province's fourth largest trading partner last year, and has launched pilot projects in the fields of finance, medicine and harbor management.

In the early 1980s, Fujian's economy was just 2.5 percent the size of Taiwan's. Today it stands at 40 percent. This year, the province has also completed a five-year project to build an extensive highway network and launch four new railway lines.

"The future for Fujian holds not only the HEZ, but also a Taiwan Straits economic zone," said Zheng Ming, professor of Xiamen University.

China has the world's third largest economy and experts expect it to surpass second-placed Japan in the next few years. Lu Zhangong, Fujian's Party secretary, said: "If it continues improving as it has been doing, Fujian's economy will surpass Taiwan's in the future."

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