Mainland, Taiwan negotiators review their achievements

Negotiators from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan met on Monday to review achievements in their talks since 2008.

The Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) and its Taiwanese counterpart the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) looked back on 11 rounds of cross-Strait talks which led to 23 agreements.

They removed a lot of systemic barriers in exchanges and smoothed interaction between the two sides, said ARATS vice president Zheng Lizhong, who led the mainland negotiators in the review.

The review was designed to ensure future talks are pragmatic and continue to benefit ordinary people across the Strait, he said.

Zheng called on the two sides to consolidate trust by adhering to the 1992 Consensus, a key document denying Taiwanese independence.

"The main reason that cross-Strait talks have made so much progress is that we have stuck to this common political foundation," he said.

"Although the two sides have followed different development paths and held different positions on certain issues, there is one common ground that none of us prefer conflict over peace, separation over exchange nor confrontation over cooperation."

Shih Hui-fen, SEF vice chairperson, told the meeting that cross-Strait talks have covered issues that are vital to ordinary people's lives, such as business exchanges, tourism, travel, judicial cooperation and natural disaster responses.

The agreements signed between the SEF and ARATS have led to real improvement in cross-Strait relations and people's well-being, she said.

According to an opinion poll conducted by Taiwan's mainland affairs department last month, about 82.5 percent of respondents acknowledged the progress of ARATS-SEF talks.

Shih pledged that the SEF will work harder to push forward the implementation of the current agreements in Taiwan and maintain steady cooperation with ARATS.

Both of them highlighted the historic meeting between Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore in early November and promised to capitalize on the momentum created by that meeting.

The ARATS and SEF have been entrusted by authorities to engage in regular cross-Strait talks since the early 1990s. After a suspension of 10 years, the two organizations resumed talks in 2008 and signed a number of key deals, such as lifting bans on direct shipping, air transport and poster services and an overall economic cooperation pact.

The agreements led to considerable changes across the Strait. Passenger flights between the two sides have increased from 36 per week in 2008 to 890, with the flight route greatly shortened.

Since the two sides lifted the ban on mainland tourists to Taiwan in 2008, 13 million mainland residents have been to the island.

Since mainland firms were allowed to invest in Taiwan in 2009, mainland investment in Taiwan has reached about 1.7 billion U.S. dollars and created about 11,400 new jobs. Endi