Mainland and Taiwan First Fibre Optic Link
The first data has been sent over cables linking China and Taiwan, in what seems to be another sign of improved ties between the two. The two fibre-optic cables connect the city of Xiamen in southern China and the Taiwanese-controlled Kinmen island group, located around 200km from the main island of Taiwan. The cables have been laid by Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile and cost a total of 200m Taiwanese dollars (US$6.7m).
Relations between China and Taiwan have been improving since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan in May 2008. His policy has been to sign more economic commercial agreements with the People’s Republic – such as this one.
“This is part of a crescendo of increasing economic, logistic and person-to-person links across the Straits – we’ve seen direct flights increasingly replacing the flights via Hong Kong or Macau and a growing number of tourists from the mainland visiting Taiwan,” Duncan Clark, an analyst from BDA China, told the BBC.
“Beijing thinks that in the end this kind of co-operation will lead to Taiwan becoming politically closer to mainland China”, commented Jonathan Fenby, a China director of the research service Trusted Sources.
– BBC