Taiwan enterprises will benefit from increased business opportunities presented by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, an official with the Taiwan Affairs Office of Beijing Municipality (TAOBM) has said.

"The commercial activities related to the Olympics will be based on the principles of fairness and transparency," TAOBM official Liu Qing said yesterday at a business forum focussing on relations with the island. "But our Taiwan compatriots will have a natural advantage of bearing the same culture and feelings.

"We always find it very convenient to work with them."

More than 500 businesspeople, scholars and experts from Taiwan and the Chinese mainland attended the Eighth Beijing-Taiwan Techmall Forum, which opened yesterday at the Beijing Hotel.

"We hope to contribute in the fields of telecommunications, instant image transmission and chips used for security management, and to participate in designing large systems for the Beijing Olympic Games," said Frank Huang, chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association and the Powerchip Semiconductor Corporation.

"Taiwan businesspeople are eager to make contributions to Beijing achieving the goal of a high-tech Olympics, and we have already laid a good foundation in those fields," Huang said. "The strengths of Taiwan and the mainland are mutually complementary, and there will be abundant opportunities for us if the two sides further co-operate."

Wang Qishan, mayor of Beijing, said at the opening ceremony of the annual forum: "We sincerely hope our Taiwan compatriots in the business and science community can come and take an active part in Beijing's construction into a modern international metropolis."

Wang promised to cultivate a better investment environment for Taiwan businesspeople and further co-operation in the fields of high-tech, services, manufacturing, agriculture and Olympic construction programmes.

Chin Wu, chief technological officer of the strategic planning and investment division for Taiwan-based ASUSTeK Computer Inc, said he hoped the forum would reap more substantial fruits: The two sides will establish new joint industry standards to play a bigger role in the international electronics industry.

"Taiwan's strengths lie in its research capacity, management mode, logistics and good reputation in the international market," Wu said. "The mainland has advantages of manufacturing capacity, abundant resources, low costs and a burgeoning ability to innovate."

(China Daily September 28, 2005)