Ma Ying-jeou Foundation plans to invite mainland students to Taiwan

TAIPEI -- The Taiwan-based Ma Ying-jeou Foundation announced on Thursday that it is planning to invite 50 college students from the mainland to visit the island in mid-July.

According to the planned schedule released at a press conference, the mainland students from five universities, including Hunan University which Ma Ying-jeou visited in April, will be led to several Taiwan universities and engage in dialogue with their peers.

The trip is estimated to last for nine days and will include stops at some well-known scenic spots and relic sites on the island, said the foundation.

The executive director of the foundation Hsiao Hsu-tsen said he had called on the island's mainland-affairs authority to prudently consider the plan and resume normal exchanges across the Taiwan Strait as soon as possible.

From late March to early April, Taiwan former leader Ma Ying-jeou led a group of Taiwan students visiting several cities on the mainland, such as Shanghai, Wuhan and Changsha, during which the delegation had exchanges with mainland college students.

During the exchanges, Ma personally invited mainland students to visit Taiwan, said Hsiao, adding that since May, the foundation has been working on the invitation, and the mainland has been actively responding to these efforts.

"This shows that it is the common aspiration of both sides of the Strait to have exchanges with each other," said Hsiao.

He added that the invitation is conducive to conveying more kindness and message of peace and promoting the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations.