China has agreed to buy 2,000 tons of fruit to help ease the glut of fruit in Taiwan, Taiwan's opposition Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), said on Saturday, according to dpa. KMT official Chen Wu-hsiung said that a Chinese agricultural delegation had signed a letter of intent (LOI) with the farmers' association in two counties, Tainan and Yunlin. Under the LOI, China will buy 2,000 tons of fruit from the two counties over a one-year period. The fruit includes bananas, pineapples, oranges and mangoes. KMT lawmaker Pai Tien-chih urged the Taiwan government to remove the ban on cross-Strait air links so that Taiwanese fruit can be quickly transported to China. Because of the five-decade ban on air links with China, Taiwanese fruit must be shipped to China via a third place, usually Hong Kong, and some fruit becomes rotten before it arrives in China. This is China's third large-scale purchase of Taiwanese fruit since October 2006 when Beijing bought 2,000 tons of bananas to ease a glut which caused the banana price to plummet on the island. In January 2007, China again bought 2,000 tons of Taiwan oranges. Taipei still bans formal contacts with Beijing, but has allowed indirect trade with China since 1985. The fruit trade is carried out between civic groups in Taiwan and China, arranged by the pro-unification KMT. The independence-leaning Taiwan government is opposed to the trade, calling it an offensive from Beijing to win the Taiwanese people's support for Taiwan-China reunification.
