Chats, fun to dominate festive Mainland-Taiwan forum
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More than 10,000 people in Taiwan are expected to come across the Taiwan Straits from this weekend to attend a weeklong grassroots-level forum to be held in the Chinese mainland's boomtown Xiamen starting Saturday, organizers said.
The annual Straits Forum, now in its second year, will feature 25 activities including leisure chats, galas, and religious worships, instead of formal dialogues and policy-setting negotiations that dominate other major mainland-Taiwan exchanges.
Lin Weiguo, a senior Taiwan affairs official of Fujian Province, told reporters that Taiwan's ruling party Kuomintang's vice chairwoman Huang Ming-hui, New Party chairman Yok Mu-ming, People First Party secretary-general Chin Ching-sheng and Non-Partisan Solidarity Union chairman Lin Pin-kuan will be among the participants from Taiwan.
However, Lin said about 80 percent of the Taiwan attendants this year were non-officials and over 60 percent were from central or southern Taiwan.
Celebrities from across the Strait are to perform in a grand gala on Saturday night following a short opening ceremony.
Themed "Focus on livelihood, benefit both sides of the Strait", the forum will gather people from across the Strait to discuss cooperation on agriculture, tourism, banking, investment, publishing, and ethnic culture preservation among others, organizers said. Participants will even jointly worship their shared ancestors, gods, and legendary figures revered on both sides of the Strait.
"(The Straits Forum) is covering a wider range of topics and has become a truly rewarding event," New Party chairman Yok Mu-ming told Xinhua on Friday.
Comparing cross-Strait exchanges to water that should be kept flowing lest it become stagnant, Yok Mu-ming said exchanges across the Taiwan Strait should be carried out on a regular basis.
The Straits Forum would further broaden and deepen exchanges between the mainland and Taiwan, he said.
Xiamen, a coastal city with a population of 2.52 million, had been a flashpoint of cross-Strait rivalry in the 1950s and 1960s, after the Kuomintang lost the civil war with the Communist Party of China and fled to Taiwan in late 1940s.
Cross-Strait exchanges warmed after the Kuomintang, led by a new generation of leaders, returned to power in 2008 Taiwan election, ending the eight-year rule by the pro-secession Democratic Progressive Party.
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