Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) yesterday invited Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chongqing Secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來) to organize a delegation of potential investors to visit Taiwan.
However, Bo did not respond to the invitation in public. If Bo, a member of the CCP’s decision-making politburo, were to visit Taiwan, he would be the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Taiwan in recent history.
Chiang extended the invitation during a meeting with Bo at a CCP guesthouse yesterday morning.
Chiang told Bo that the 12 cross-strait deals Taiwan and China have signed over the past two years would serve as the foundation for cross-strait trade, while the newly signed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and a copyright protection agreement would help both sides develop trade advantages.
Bo, meanwhile, expressed his hope that Taiwan and Chongqing would pursue closer economic cooperation.
“People across the Taiwan Strait have a special bond with Chongqing. We cherish the bond very much,” Bo said.
Chongqing was once the provisional capital of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) during its war with the CCP before the KMT fled to Taiwan. It was also where the two parties once signed a peace agreement.
Bo told the SEF chairman that residents of Chongqing understood the city’s potential to develop trade relations with Taiwan, saying that he hoped Taiwanese businesses would focus on the city now that the ECFA has been signed.
“[I] expect that there will be great prospects in terms of cooperation between Chongqing and Taiwan,” Bo said, adding that Taiwanese firms including Foxconn, Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) and Inventec Corp (英業達) have set up operations in the city.
Before the meeting, Chiang toured the Zhaomushan Botanical Gardens in the company of his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), where the two planted a ficus virens tree — the city tree of Chongqing — which Chiang named “cooperation win-win.”
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