A Chinese mainland spokesman said here Wednesday that the three direct exchanges of mail, trade, and air and shipping services across the Taiwan Strait had so far not been realized because the Taiwan authorities were holding back the progress in this regard.
  Li Weiyi, spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, was speaking at a press conference in response to remarks by the Taiwan side that exchanges of mail and trade had been realized and only direct air and shipping services still had to be tackled.
  Li mentioned that the Taiwan side had allowed Taiwanese business people to invest on the mainland, but still set limits on investment by mainland companies in Taiwan. There were no direct exchanges in the other two fields either.
  On recent pledges by Taiwan, such as the "three direct links"  are inevitable" and "concrete action will be taken in the next three months", Li said that the mainland would wait for the action.
  He made an analogy of the situation: "It's like there were no sounds from the staircase in the past. Now we've heard the sounds, but we're more keen on when the people will come down."   Enditem

Direct shipping no threat to Taiwan: Spokesman

  The five-year trial of direct shipping services between several cities of the Chinese mainland and Taiwan has been deemed successful, according to a mainland spokesman.
  The links have raised no safety issues or trade disputes and proved that direct shipping posed no "safety problems" to Taiwan, Li said here Wednesday.
  Approved by communications authorities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, direct shipping services between Xiamen and Fuzhou on the mainland and Kaohsiung in Taiwan started on April 19, 1997.
  Li urged the Taiwan authorities to honor its pledges to promote the "three direct links" across the Taiwan Strait in the next three months and "not to let the Taiwan people down".  
  The "three direct links" refer to the direct exchanges of mail, trade, and air and shipping services across the Taiwan Strait. The two sides have been estranged since the civil war in the late
1940s.  Enditem

  
Xinhuanet 2002-06-27