The 7th Cross-Strait Economic and Trade Cooperation and Development Forum, co-sponsored by MOFCOM and Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, was opened on September 8. Over 200 celebrities from the academic and business circles across the Strait had an in-depth exchange of views on “Industrial Transformation and cross-strait cooperation”. Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Yaoping delivered a keynote speech.

According to Jiang Yaoping, cross-strait economic and trade cooperation has been deepening in recent years, and an all round, wide-ranging, and multi-level cooperation pattern was formed basically, with cross-strait trade kept expanding, and trade structure optimizing. Cross-strait trade totaled US$ 160 billion in 2011, and the proportion of processing trade dropped from the highest of about 70% of the total to 53.3% at present. Cross-strait investment has been deepening, and a total of 87,000 Taiwan-invested projects were approved by Mainland as of the end of June 2012, with the actual utilized Taiwan investment amounted to US$ 55.8 billion, and 126 mainland enterprises has set up companies or resident offices in Taiwan. Cross-strait industrial cooperation has been pushed forward steadily, and such key areas as LED lighting, LCD panels, electric vehicles, wireless city, cold chain logistics are identified for pilot projects, pilot cities were selected, and development planning for the next step was confirmed. Breakthrough was made in cross-strait financial cooperation, and benefited parties increased. At present, ten banks from Taiwan were approved to set up branches in Mainland, and four from Mainland were permitted to set up branches or representative offices in Taiwan

Jiang Yaoping pointed out that speeding up industrial restructuring, enhancing international competitiveness and warding off external trade risks have become the common mission for cross-strait economic development at a grim and complicated economic situation abroad, and there is a pressing need for the two sides to work closely to overcome difficulties.

Jiang Yaoping put forward four proposals on deepening cross-strait cooperation: I. Continue to speed up the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) follow-up talks, so as to promote opening up to each other for goods trade and service trade across the Strait. II. Seize the opportunity of the signing of Cross-Strait Agreement on Investment Protection and Promotion to actively promote two-way investment cooperation. III. Speed up cross-strait industrial cooperation with a long-term view. IV. Promote pragmatically and facilitate transformation and upgrading of Taiwan-invested enterprise in Mainland.

Chen Hua, Vice Governor of Fujian Province, Chen Wuxiong, Honorary Chairman of Taiwan Federation of Industry, and Zeng Qinzhao, Executive Vice President of the Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland, delivered a speech respectively.