The meeting between Shih and China's Minister of Commerce Chen Deming took place a day after Chinese President Hu Jintao promised Lien Chan, Taiwan's representative to the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, that talks on ECFA, a cross-Taiwan Strait version of a free trade agreement, could start within this year.

Shih was accompanied by Huang Chih-peng, director of the Bureau of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and Lu Wen-hsiang, an adviser and section chief at Taiwan's representative office in Singapore, during his meeting with Chen.

Sources close to the Taiwanese delegation said Shih and his Chinese counterpart exchanged views on the ECFA-related consultative framework, timetable and topics to be addressed.

With the two sides scheduled to hold a fourth round of high-level talks in December in central Taiwan's Taichung City, the sources said the ECFA issues are expected to be touched upon during that meeting in accordance with Hu's promise to Lien in their bilateral talks on APEC sidelines Saturday.

Four agreements are scheduled to be signed during the Taichung round of talks between the two sides' top cross-strait negotiators — Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung and Chen Yunlin, president of China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.

Shih said on the APEC sidelines that the four agreements to be sealed at the upcoming Chiang-Chen meeting concern fishing crew cooperation, farm produce quarantine inspection, avoidance of double taxation and industrial product standards, inspection and certification.

“All of these agreements are very important in the process of normalizing cross-strait trade and economic relations,” Shih said.

According to a previous cross-strait consensus, the two sides will start formal negotiations on ECFA issues in January next year, with relevant issues being tentatively discussed first at the forthcoming Chiang-Chen talks.

If all goes well, the ECFA deal is expected to be signed at the fifth round of Chiang-Chen talks scheduled for the first half of 2010.

Taiwan attaches great importance to the cross strait ECFA deal, as it hopes the pact can serve as a stepping stone for the signing of free trade agreements with other countries to facilitate freer flow of goods and capital and to protect it from being marginalized in today's era of increasing regional and global economic integration.

Taiwan and China have already held four rounds of informal talks on ECFA, all of which focused on principles related to an “early harvest list” under the agreement.

The “early harvest list” refers to items to be subject to tariff concessions or full market opening as soon as the ECFA pact is signed.