After breaking ice, China, Taiwan talk business

By Jason Subler

BOAO, China (Reuters) - Taiwan's vice president-elect and China's commerce minister held talks on economic cooperation on Sunday, underlining the potential benefits of closer ties after a landmark meeting a day earlier.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Taiwan Vice President-elect Vincent Siew shook hands and talked one-on-one for about 20 minutes on Saturday, in what many analysts saw as a breakthrough that could thaw their icy relations and pave the way for closer trade and transit links.

Siew, who attended the meeting in a private capacity, met Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming on Sunday. Each led a delegation of industrialists, academics and officials to discuss details of how to step up cooperation.

They first met behind closed doors and then held an hour-long seminar, with executives from technology, shipping and other companies from both sides swapping views on the specific market opening and cooperation they hoped to see in their fields.

The meetings were held on the sidelines of the April 11-13 Boao Forum for Asia held on the southern Chinese island province of Hainan.

China's Chen called normalising trade and economic ties between the two sides an urgent matter.

"This urgency results especially from the current global uncertainties that we both face," Chen said, pointing to the economic slowdown in the United States and other Western countries as well as soaring prices for natural resources.

"In such times, when we see such a good chance to bring our two sides' economic and trade ties forward towards normalisation, ... by working together, we can reduce the negative impact on us from the slowing of growth in Western countries," he said.