Fujian governor begins six-day Taiwan visit
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Governor of east China's Fujian Province Huang Xiaojing started a six-day visit to Taiwan Wednesday.
After his arrival in Taipei Wednesday morning, Huang visited Cecilia Y. Koo, the wife of the late chairman of the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), Koo Chen-fu. A native of the Cangshan District in Fuzhou, Fujian's capital, she was presented with Fujian delicacies by Huang.
Huang is heading an economic, trade and cultural exchange delegation to the island.
His visit came at the invitation of the Taiwan-based Kuomintang's National Policy Foundation.
The theme of Huang's visit is: "Visiting Friends and Doing Business."
Fujian Vice-Governor Su Zengtian is also scheduled to visit SEF Vice Chairman Kao Koong Liann, whose ancestral home is also in Fuzhou.
The delegation will meet with an association of townsmen of Fujian origin and attend the opening ceremony of an exhibition on cross-Strait clan relatives exchange and family name books.
On Wednesday at noon, SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung is scheduled to meet with Huang's delegation. In the following days, KMT Honorary Chairmen Lien Chan and Wu Poh-hsiung will also meet with Huang.
A forum discussing Fujian-Taiwan cooperation and aiming to deepen mainland-Taiwan cooperation is to be held Wednesday afternoon at Taipei's Grand Hotel.
A contract-signing ceremony for Fujian enterprises investing in the island will be held after the forum.
The six-day trip will cover all parts of Taiwan, from Keelung in the north to Kaohsiung in the south. The delegation will meet with locals from all walks of life.
Other activities of exchange during the tour include: exchanges involving over 100 villages and towns from each side; 10,000 of Fujian tourists visiting Taiwan; and the signing of a cooperation agreement between two ports -- Taiwan's Kaohsiung and Fujian's Xiamen.
Huang is one of several provincial government or Party committee heads to recently visit the island. The Chinese mainland and Taiwan have been recently intensifying their exchanges, especially with high-level visits to the island by mainland delegations, seen as a sign of increasingly solid relations.
Late last month, Luo Qingquan, Communist Party of China (CPC) chief of central China's Hubei Province, visited the island with a one-thousand-strong delegation and attended the eight-day Hubei-Taiwan festival.
During the cultural festival, Hubei companies reached procurement agreements worth 590 million U.S. dollars with Taiwan counterparts.
Earlier in April, a municipal government delegation of about 260 people led by Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng visited the island, promoting the Shanghai World Expo.
During the trip, several Shanghai companies and Taiwanese counterparts signed 28 agreements on long-term exchanges and short-term purchases, along with agreements on investments in finance, chemical materials, steel, tourism, intellectual property rights and farm products, among others.
Fujian Province lies across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan.
