Taiwan forum aiming for better cross-strait communication

A high-profile forum involving some 200 cross-strait experts and officials from the mainland as well as Taiwan's ruling and opposition parties kicked off in Taipei yesterday.

The forum's host, Chang Ya-chung, president of the Taipei-based Chinese Integration Association, said the event, the first since the Communist Party changed its leadership after its national congress in Beijing last month, would serve as a communication platform for the island's ruling Kuomintang and the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party as well as the Communist Party to exchange views on cross-strait relations.

"It is to urge the two sides to take note of the importance of full mutual recognition and trust," Chang said at the opening of the two-day event.

It had originally been scheduled for July but was called off due to Taipei's objection to the participation of "too many" retired generals from the mainland.

Without enough mutual recognition and trust, all the fruits of cross-strait exchanges "would remain sand dunes that could be easily destroyed", Chang said.

Sun Yafu, vice-chairman of the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (Arats), admitted that it would not be an easy task to seek mutual recognition, given the differences in the economic, political, cultural and social development of the two sides in the past century.