Kinmen County Commissioner Li Wo-shi (李沃士) on Friday asked Fujian Province Chinese Communist Party Secretary You Quan (尤權) to help secure a drop in price for the water that Kinmen plans to buy from the Chinese province during the official’s visit.
Li made the request at a briefing by Kinmen County Waterworks Director Wang Teng-wei (王登緯) on the progress of a plan aimed at resolving the county’s chronic water shortages by channeling water across the Taiwan Strait.
The briefing was organized for You, who flew from Taiwan proper to Kinmen earlier in the day. Kinmen was the last stop of You’s five-day tour of Taiwan, which started on Monday.
Wang said Kinmen has been working on buying water from China for nearly 20 years. Last year, two intermediary bodies of the respective sides reached an agreement on the issue, he said.
Now the only matters that need to be addressed are the price of the water and the construction of pipes that will connect China’s Longhu Reservoir and Kinmen’s Tienpu Reservoir, Wang said.
However, Fujian’s water supplier has set the price at nearly 2 yuan (US$0.30) per 1,000 liters of water and the county government hopes that figure can be lowered, Wang said.
You declined to answer media queries about the issue.
The visit was You’s first to the country and his presence has drawn media attention because Fujian is the Chinese province designated by Beijing as the test spot for its Taiwan policy, meaning that any plans to promote cross-strait exchanges are first carried out in Fujian.
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