July 12, 2009

Co-sponsored by the National Policy Foundation of the Kuomintang Party (KMT) and the Research Center for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait under the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the Fifth Cross-Strait Economic, Trade, and Cultural Forum was held in Changsha City, Hunan, July 11-12, 2009.

The purpose of this forum is to promote and deepen cross-Strait cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation, to ensure the passing of the torch and revitalization of Chinese culture, to promote cooperation in cross-Strait cultural industries, to expand cross-Strait educational exchanges and, to hold a forum on cross-Strait economic and trade cooperation. Wu Poh-hsiung, KMT Party Chairman, and Jia Qinglin, Standing Member of CCP Central Politburo, spoke at the forum. Over 500 experts and scholars attended, including representatives of the KMT and the CCP, other political parties on Taiwan, and representatives from the cultural, educational, economic, and trade sectors. Top executives of cultural and educational departments from both sides of the Taiwan Strait were also in attendance as special guests.

Participants in the forum conclude that since May last year, the two sides have been presented with an historic opportunity. They have made significant progress towards peaceful development, consistent with the interests and expectations of the public on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Closer cross-Strait economic and trade relations have been accompanied by active steps to strengthen cross-Strait cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation. This will have far-reaching significance for the continued peaceful development of cross-Strait relations. An enduring and brilliant Chinese culture is our common legacy. It is an important link joining people on both sides. Given these new circumstances, we should promote and deepen cross-Strait cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation, encourage identification with Chinese culture, and create a new era for the Chinese nation. After two days of discussion, participants in the forum have offered the following recommendations:

1. We should increase cross-Strait cultural exchanges and cooperation, underscoring our common heritage and promoting Chinese culture.

-- Promote bilateral exchanges and cooperation in culture, art, religion, and folk customs.

-- Increase protection for our cultural heritage, tangible and intangible, ensure their transmission and continued use, thoroughly preserving our classical books and writings, establish a platform of communication and cooperation for preserving our cultural assets, and properly protect Chinese cultural treasures.

-- Encourage innovation in Chinese culture, stimulate creative vitality, and make Chinese culture relevant to the modern world.

-- Encourage concerned government agencies in various localities on both sides to increase cultural exchanges, take turns holding, or participating in a variety of cultural festivals, arts festivals, and other large-scale cultural exchange activities. Help literary and arts groups on Taiwan to participate in the Shanghai World Expo., either for exhibition or performance.

-- Help cultural and art institutions, organizations, art schools and artists to teach, jointly create, tour, visit, and cooperate in holding performances, including commercial performances.

-- Encourage libraries, art galleries, museums, institutions dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage, and research institutes to hold cultural exchanges, joint exhibits, and engage in collaborative research.

-- The Chinese characters used on both sides belong to the same system. An objective understanding of both sides' use of Chinese characters, both its history and current state, will help us find common ground while narrowing any differences. It will help us reach a consensus, making it easier for the public on both sides to learn and use the characters. Both sides should cooperate in the compilation of Chinese language reference tools.

-- Support scholars in their efforts to standardize terminologies and proper nouns, to jointly compile dictionaries and to promote cooperation in standardizing the pronunciation of words with a different pronunciation in a particular context, cooperation in computer fonts and thesauruses, cooperation in standardizing the wording and pronunciation of geographical names, and cooperation in font conversion software.

-- Support the formulation of policies beneficial to cross-Strait cultural exchanges, simplify related administrative procedures, and provide a proper environment for exchanges and cooperation.

-- Fully develop the strengths of each side, promote dialogue and exchanges between Chinese culture and world culture, and disseminate Chinese culture to the rest of the world.

2. We should increase cross-Strait cooperation in the cultural industries, increasing their international competitiveness.

-- Integrate cross-Strait cultural industries resources, optimize resource allocation and networking structure, nurture the cultural market, create a common cultural industry production chain, and enable the formation of industrial clusters.

-- Explore traditional Chinese culture in depth, jointly create distinctive and original Chinese styles and brands.

-- Integrate culture with science and technology, develop new cultural industries, build a modern system of cultural industries, and promote cross-Strait cultural industry development.

-- Promote cross-Strait cultural industry standards, strengthen protection of intellectual property rights (IPR), establish a platform for communication and cooperation, and optimize cross-Strait cultural industry development.

-- Increase cooperation in the cultural-creative industries, sponsor cross-Strait cultural-creative industry expos, establish bodies to promote cultural-creative industry exchanges and cooperation.

-- Increase exchanges and cooperation in broadcasting, film, television and other fields, including joint production of film and television dramas, market access of films and television programs, and exchanges and cooperation among film and television professionals.

-- Establish a mechanism for publication exchanges, expand trade in publications and copyrights, increase publishing industry cooperation, develop a market for overseas Chinese-language publishing.

3. We should promote cross-Strait educational exchanges and cooperation, enhancing the quality of education on both sides.

-- Promote cross-Strait educational development, highlight the spirit and essence of Chinese culture in education, increase exchanges for shared experience, and cultivate cultural talents.

-- Make good use of advantages of each side, open up and share educational resources, create a favorable environment for cross-Strait academic exchanges.

-- Support exchanges and cooperation among schools at all levels, establish various platforms for cooperation in order to elevate the standard of education through inter-school exchanges and cooperation, and promote mechanisms for the transfer, recognition and accumulation of academic credits.

-- The recognition of each other's academic credentials is beneficial to cross-Strait educational exchanges and cooperation moving to a more substantive level.

-- Encourage students either side to study on the other’s side, and create favorable conditions for this goal.

-- Increase teacher and student exchanges, encourage the holding of large-scale exchanges for young students, and establish platforms of exchanges for this goal.

-- Encourage concerned groups and schools to hold primary and middle school student exchanges, focusing on the declamation and hand writing of the Chinese classics.

4. We should explore negotiating and signing a cultural and educational exchange agreement, establishing mechanisms for cross-Strait cultural and educational cooperation.

-- Support concerned institutions, experts and scholars to conduct research and planning on a cultural and educational exchange agreement, for the purpose of establishing mechanisms for cultural and educational exchanges and cooperation, so as to institutionalize and standardize long-term cultural and educational exchanges.

5. We should strengthen cross-Strait news exchanges.

-- Expand the exchange of information, push for the establishment of news media bureaus on each other’s side as soon as possible, encourage the media to strengthen exchanges and cooperation across the Strait.

6. We should encourage the growth of Taiwan-funded enterprises on the mainland, and promote cooperation in industries related to energy conservation, environmental protection, and new energy sources.

-- Help Taiwan-funded enterprises respond to dramatic changes in the global financial environment, take advantage of opportunities provided by the mainland's “Rise of Middle Part” and other regional development strategy and policy of expanding domestic demand, adjust their own development strategy and market position in light of actual circumstances, accelerate their own transformation and upgrading as well as the pace of industrial relocation in order to accelerate development.

-- Strengthen cooperation in industries related to energy conservation, environmental protection, and new energy sources with respect to R&D in technology, product applications, marketing, two-way investment, encourage businesses to study, use, and promote products related to energy conservation, environmental protection, and new energy technologies, hold cross-Strait seminars on a regular basis, establish a platform of communication to promote the building of communities anchored on energy conservation and environmental protection on both sides of the Strait..

-- Engage in joint research and cooperation in order to address climate change; exchange information on weather observation and forecasting technology; raise standards for weather forecasting for torrential rains, typhoons and other forms of severe weather; increase cooperation and establish communication mechanisms to respond to environmental issues.

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