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Lawrence  Chung

Exchanges between Taiwan and the mainland have continued non-stop this year, hardly affected by the latest row over US arms sales to the island.
While Beijing has suspended military contacts with Washington and threatened US firms with sanctions over the US$6.4 billion arms package for Taipei, it has continued to send officials to Taiwan in cross-strait exchanges.
A 19-member delegation, led by Jing Junhai , deputy governor of Shaanxi  province, arrived in Taiwan on Wednesday,  becoming the first high-level group from the mainland to visit the island after the Lunar New Year holiday.
Jing said the group would serve as an advance party for a trade mission with more than 50 times the number of delegates to be led by Shaanxi Governor Yuan Chunqing  in September.
The trade mission will be among more than 15 high-level mainland business and cultural delegations scheduled to visit Taiwan this year, officials at Taipei's Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said.
Fan Liqing, a spokeswoman for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing, confirmed on Wednesday that the mainland planned to send more senior provincial officials on visits to Taiwan this year, after sending three last year. But she declined to give details. 
SEF officials, however, said that in addition to Yuan, the officials would include Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng , Fujian Governor Huang Xiaojing, Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua, Hubei party secretary Luo Qingquan and Wang Fuqing , vice-president of the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (Arats). 
In return, Taiwan will also send senior officials to visit the mainland, including SEF chairman Chiang Pin-kung, whose group represents the Taiwanese government in talks with Beijing in the absence of formal ties.
Chiang is scheduled to lead a delegation of business leaders and government officials to the mainland  late next month, while his deputy, Kao Koong-lian, will lead another delegation later this year. 
'SEF will organise five to six missions to the mainland this year, reciprocating the same number of visits by Arats as part of the efforts to promote exchanges between the two bodies,' SEF deputy secretary-general Maa Shaw-chang said. 
Chiang and his Arats counterpart, Chen Yunlin, would hold a fifth round of cross-strait talks on the mainland between May and June, during which the two sides would discuss a semi-free-trade pact, among other  issues, Maa said.
Chen Shu-jung, a spokeswoman for Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang, said a cross-strait forum held twice a year between the Communist Party and the KMT would be held as scheduled, around June and December.
'The flurry of ongoing and upcoming exchanges shows that cross-strait relations are not disturbed by the arms sales row as reflected by what Hu Jintao  has underscored before the Lunar New Year,' said Yen Chen-shen, a researcher at National Chengchi University's Institute of International Relations.
In a meeting with Taiwanese businessmen in Fujian two days before the  Lunar New Year, the president  said Beijing would do all it could to promote cross-strait economic co-operation, including signing the Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement - a semi-free-trade pact the island wants to strike with Beijing to avoid being marginalised in the face of a  trade bloc to be formed this year by the mainland and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Hu even stressed Beijing would 'fully take care of the benefits of Taiwanese compatriots' in signing the deal, suggesting that the mainland was willing to sacrifice its interests in the agreement in order to benefit Taiwan. 
Shortly after Hu's statement, the official Xinhua News Agency ran an editorial praising  his approach to cross-strait relations. 'Of course, cross-strait ties are a heavy responsibility and there is a long road ahead, and they could run into difficulties and obstacles along the way,' it said. 'But we must recognise that the new approach did not come easily.'
It added that, from a broader perspective, the policy of improving cross-strait ties and peaceful cross-strait development was a 'political basis for the mainland and Taiwan belonging to 'one China''.
Analysts said the editorial said it all. 
'It is not in Beijing's overall interest to punish Taiwan over the arms sales issue, given that cross-strait relations have improved drastically because of Ma's policy to engage the mainland,' said cross-strait expert George Tsai Wei, a professor at Taipei's Chinese Cultural University. Taiwan's mainland-friendly President, Ma Ying-jeou, reversed the provocative approach taken by his pro-independence predecessor, Chen Shui-bian, in dealing with the mainland after he took office in May 2008.
'Any punishment would only give the pro-independence camp the  ammunition to attack Ma's cross-strait policy that could force him to step on the brakes in his mainland engagement policy,' Tsai said.
He said instead of suspending contacts or business benefits for Taiwan, Beijing was expected to maintain active exchanges and provide further economic sweeteners for Taiwan ahead of the island's 2012 presidential election to make sure that cross-strait relations would not return to the sour state seen under Chen's rule from 2000 to 2008. 
But Tsai and other analysts also noted that Beijing would try to push for political contacts with the island to pave the way for political integration in the future - a mission Hu hopes to secure as part of his legacy before he retires as president in 2013.



Cross-strait exchanges go on despite US arms deal