China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Deputy Chairman Zheng Lizhong (鄭立中) heads to Taipei today after his visits to Chiayi County and Greater Taichung at the head of a Chinese business and agricultural delegation.
Zheng and his delegation will visit the Neihu Technology Park and will meet with former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) in Taipei, said the trip’s organizers, the non-profit National Policy Foundation.
The group will also visit tea and bamboo plantations in New Taipei City (新北市) and fishery processing plants in Keelung, the foundation said.
The group is scheduled to tour a tea plantation and a tea factory in Taoyuan County on Monday before heading home later that day, the foundation said.
In the south, the group was looking for areas of -cooperation with small and medium-sized businesses and agricultural enterprises.
Zheng said on Wednesday that China was prepared to institute massive long-term procurement programs to help ease the financial woes of Taiwanese farmers, who have been hurt by falling produce prices and market gluts.
Another visiting Chinese official, Shandong Governor Jiang Daming (姜大明), also said on Wednesday that his province would purchase 5,000 tonnes of bananas from Taiwan this season.
Jiang, who is leading a Shandong business promotion delegation on a visit to Greater Taichung, met yesterday with Taichung Deputy Mayor Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家旗), who also urged them to buy some of the city’s fruit and flowers.
Hsiao particularly mentioned Taichung’s lychees and the Flaming lily, a flower species that is rare in Shandong.
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