China News Agency, Beijing, July 14 (Reporter Liu Dawei) This year marks the 35th anniversary of the opening of exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
At this important node, the 14th Straits Forum Conference with the theme of "expanding non-governmental exchanges and deepening integrated development" will be held in Xiamen on the 12th.
A number of people on the island said in a telephone interview with a reporter from China News Agency on the 14th that only by communicating with each other can the two sides become closer and closer.
In recent years, due to the epidemic and other factors, cross-strait exchanges have been seriously affected. Taiwanese people still hold positive views and have high expectations for exchanges with the mainland.
On July 13, the 14th Straits Forum Conference was held in Xiamen, Fujian Province.
Photo by Wang Dongming
Chen Chunlin, president of Taiwan Chinese Hanwei Cultural Promotion Association, has been committed to promoting cross-strait cultural exchanges for many years and participated in the first Straits Forum.
He said that exchanges and interactions are necessary to promote cross-strait relations.
People-to-people exchanges are the mainstay of cross-strait exchanges. How to further deepen the achievements of exchanges over the years as a catalyst for cross-strait integration and development is bound to be an important topic to be explored in depth and continuously in the future.
Lai Yueqian, a current affairs commentator on the island, also believes that embracing the grassroots people is the core basis for cross-strait exchanges.
Holding the Straits Forum as scheduled under the current cross-strait situation can make people on both sides more united.
As long as the people on both sides of the strait are together, the "Taiwan independence" forces can be effectively contained.
During the Straits Forum, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, sent a letter to the Taiwanese youth who participated in the Straits Youth Forum, which aroused heated discussions on the island.
Lai Yueqian, who was previously engaged in education on the island, paid special attention to this activity related to cross-strait youth exchanges in the Straits Forum.
In his view, only by letting more young people on the island get to know and understand the mainland, they will gradually discover that this is a wider world, which is a very good opportunity for their future development and realization of their ambitions.
Chen Chunlin said that youth is the mainstream of cross-strait relations in the future, and it is a natural and healthy good thing to promote cross-strait youth to move around, get to know each other, work together, and live together.
He also looks forward to bringing happiness and satisfaction to young people in Taiwan through exchanges and integration between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait in the future.
In the face of the general trend of cross-strait exchanges, the DPP authorities continued to advocate the so-called "anti-China protection Taiwan".
According to Taiwan's "Business Times" report, the Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council announced the so-called "ban" before the Straits Forum, hindering the participation of the people on the island.
In this regard, Lai Yueqian said that the facts in recent years have proved that despite the repeated suppression by the authorities, the Taiwanese people who came to the mainland for development, the trade between Taiwan and the mainland, and the exchanges between the two sides of the strait have increased unabated.
Obviously, the DPP authorities' methods of containment, intimidation, warning, and threats are ineffective, and such operations will only make the people on the island more disgusted.
The editorial of "Wang Bao" on the 11th also believed that the more tense the cross-strait situation, the more hostile the DPP is to the mainland, and the greater the resistance to cross-strait exchanges, the more the Straits Forum should "open the door."
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