Aviation, shipping groups meet

Civil aviation and shipping groups from China and Taiwan are meeting on both sides of the Strait this week to discuss greater integration in managing cross-strait transport in the wake of a proposal by the Economic Development Advisory Conference to open direct links.

A nine-member delegation from the private Civil Aviation Association of China arrived in Taiwan yesterday on the eve of a one-day seminar, Taiwan's Air Traffic Controllers Association said.

Air traffic controllers from Taiwan and China will discuss aviation security across the Strait. It is hoped that the meeting will boost communication, understanding and trust in an effort to ensure aviation safety, the association said.

The seminar will focus on of air traffic control technology, but will not touch on any political or direct links issues. Although the seminar may pave the way for direct transport links between Taiwan and China proposed at the recent economic conference panel in Taipei. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has pledged to implement proposals reached by the panel in late August.

Meanwhile, semi-official talks on moving towards ending a half-century ban on direct shipping links between China and Taiwan resumed for the first time in four years, Chinese state press reported yesterday.

The Taiwan Strait Shipping Association and China's Association for Shipping Across the Taiwan Strait began a three-day meeting Monday in China's southern city of Shenzhen, the China Daily reported.

"If we resolve all technical problems beforehand, we will immediately open direct shipping operations when political questions are resolved," said Chen Ting-hui (陳庭輝), a leader in Taiwan's civil shipping industry.

Both sides agreed that the "one-China" principle -- Beijing's insistence that it represents the sole "legitimate" government of all of China, including Taiwan -- was the major political obstacle to direct links.

Beijing has long maintained that Taiwan's formal recognition of the principle is a key to peaceful unification and would also lead to direct shipping, air and postal links.

Taipei has refused to accept the idea because it fears that Taiwan's democratic system would become subservient to Beijing's one-party communist rule.

Hu Hanxiang (胡漢湘), head of the Chinese delegation, said Beijing was willing to open up all of China's 111 ports to Taiwan if Taipei accepted the principle, the report said.

Only 20 percent of around US$190 billion-worth of cross-strait trade over the last 21 years was transported by Chinese or Taiwanese shipping companies, partly because of the requirement that goods should be transshipped through a third port, which is most often Hong Kong.