ECFA now top priority

Chairman P.K. Chiang of Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and his Chinese counterpart Chen Yunlin, president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), exchanged the agreement documents and raised a toast at the signing ceremony.

The three new pacts cover closer cooperation on hiring and personnel administration of fishing crew, agricultural quarantine inspection and industrial product standards, inspection and certification.

SEF Chairman Chiang said the new agreements completed at the fourth round of cross-strait talks marked a major and further step by raising the total number of pacts between the two sides to 12 since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in May 2008 with an active plan to immediately begin working to improve relations with China for Taiwan's future economic development.

Chiang also stressed that it is “of great urgency for the two sides to establish an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement.”

“But the differences between the economic systems and the scale of the economies of the two sides should be taken into consideration” in the formulation of the agreement, he added.

Echoing Chiang's call, Chen from Beijing said he hopes the two sides will start negotiations on the proposed ECFA as early as possible.

The ECFA is “purely an economic issue,” Chen said, adding that China has been very active and positive regarding this matter.

“As long as it is good for cross-strait relations and economic development on both sides, (China) will try its best to achieve it,” Chen said.

Chen said that he and Chiang had “exchanged opinions in principle” on the related issues during their talks.

1|2|Next Page>>

SharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

Submit

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email