After the Cross-Straits Economic and Trade Forum opened in Beijing on April 14, an Internet survey conducted by the Social Investigation Center of China Youth Daily on April 18 shows that 74.6 percent of 1,264 interviewees on the mainland believe that relations across the Taiwan Straits have become much closer than previously, according to Chinanews.cn yesterday.

Of those responding 21.9 percent thought relations remained at the same level, while only 3.5 percent felt the mainland and Taiwan have been estranged from each other.

During the forum the mainland announced a new package of policies, including three sets of procedures directly stipulated by the State Council and 12 others formulated by relevant central government departments, to promote economic and trade relations.

The three sets of State Council policies are as follows:

• To add four more varieties to a list of 18 fruits currently grown in Taiwan and exported
• To adopt a zero-tax regime on imports of 11 kinds of vegetables produced by Taiwan farmers
• To allow more imports of Taiwan's aquatic products with zero-tax on some of them and allow Taiwan fishing boats to have the policies as their mainland counterparts for selling their products

Statistics show that, with the development of cross-Straits economic relations and trade in 2005, there have been 3,907 Taiwan-funded projects approved by the mainland and the actual capital utilization has reached US$2.15 billion. Indirect trade volume between the mainland and Taiwan hit US$91.23 billion.

The personnel exchanges across the Taiwan Straits also created a new record in 2005. The total volume of people from Taiwan to the mainland was more than 4 million person-times and the figure of mainland visitors to Taiwan was about 160,000 person-times.

The current cross-Straits communication covers many areas including culture, education, science, sports and the like.

However, as indicated by the above numbers, Taiwan should make more efforts to promote cross-Straits communication.

The survey also shows that 98 percent of the interviewees want to travel to Taiwan.

Some 84 percent expressed that it was a pity that the Taiwan authorities had turned down the mainland's offer of giant pandas.

(China.org.cn by Wang Ke April 25, 2006)