A forum on cross-Straits enterprise development and cooperation opened on Thursday in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province.

More than 200 scholars and businessmen from the mainland and Taiwan are attending the three-day forum that focuses on economic cooperation and exchanges between industrial and commercial circles on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.

The forum is jointly sponsored by the Central Committee of China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD) and the Hubei provincial government.

On the first day of the forum, Hubei and Taiwan signed 21 investment contracts worth US$421 million, in the fields of high-tech, machinery, food, building materials, textiles and logistics.

Li Bingcai, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said cross-Straits economies are mutually supplementary. The exchanges will not only promote the long-term development of Taiwan companies, but also play a positive role to boost the mainland's reform and modernization plans.

By the end of 2004, investors from Taiwan had signed 64,626 investment contracts worth US$79.9 billion with mainland partners.

(Xinhua News Agency September 23, 2005)