Wang Yung-sheng is the boss of Yidianyi Art Collection Co., a slowly growing jewelry and handicraft chain based in Taiwan. With four stores on the island off southeast China’s coast and six on the mainland, Wang spoke promisingly of yet another store on Dadeng Island in Xiamen, Fujian Province.
　　Dadeng Island, home to the newly built Dadeng Town market, has offered duty-free Taiwanese products since 1999. Built as an extension of the Dadeng Cross-Straits Petty Commodity Trading Market, the Dadeng Town market is the only one of its kind on the Chinese mainland to trade petty commodities with Taiwan.
　　“This is our first store in Fujian and we plan to use this as a foothold for further expanding businesses outside the major cities like Beijing and Shanghai,” Wang told Beijing Review.
　　Wang isn’t alone. Covering an area of 70,000 square meters, the Dadeng Town market is home to 206 stores, among which 40 percent are Taiwanese that look to expand their businesses on the mainland.
　　Burying the hatchet
　　Located in the southeast waters off Xiamen’s Xiang’an District, Dadeng and two other islands (Xiaodeng and Jiaoyu) are the closest mainland territory to Taiwan’s Kinmen.
　　The proximity, while currently providing a convenient venue for trade and exchange, has been flash points between the mainland and the tiny island during the early part of the 20th century. Kinmen was the ruling Kuomintang regime’s forefront of military antagonism against the Chinese mainland following the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Tensions in the 1950s resulted in bombardments of each respective island.
　　As cross-Straits tensions eased in the 1980s and 1990s, fishing boats from Taiwan frequented Dadeng, trading commodities with mainland residents. Although technically classified as smuggling, they reflect both sides’urgent needs to trade with their compatriots across the Straits.
　　In 1998, the Dadeng Cross-Straits Petty Commodity Trading Market was established, aiming to regulate petty commodity trade, enhance cross-Straits exchanges, push forward economic development and, more importantly, facilitate businesses between the two sides.
　　The market legalized trading activities between both sides and made it possible for local residents from both the mainland and Taiwan to start up small businesses. Legal trading in Taiwanese commodities consisted of six categories: food and oil, native and livestock products, textiles and clothes, handicrafts, light industrial products, and medicines.
　　But the initial development of the market was anything but smooth. Cross-Straits relations were strained in the late 1990s when then Taiwan leader Lee Teng-hui defined cross-Straits relations as “state-to-state, or at least special state-to-state relations.” The Chinese mainland objected to his characterization. As a repercussion, Taiwanese boats were forbidden from landing on Dadeng’s shore. Trade between the two sides was limited to boat-to-boat exchanges on the open water, and the Dadeng market seemed certain to be swallowed by the sea with only 70 to 80 of its 504 booths occupied and open for business.
　　Normalization of cross-Straits relations in recent years has allowed the market to resume normal business operations, with major improvements being achieved after the realization of the“three links”—direct postal, transportation (especially airline), and trade—in 2008 between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.
　　Besides, more preferential policies successively came out for facilitating development of the market in Dadeng. In 1999, for instance, the Xiamen Municipal Government issued a regulation for the market—total trade of imported Taiwanese goods less than 1,000 yuan ($157) would enjoy a duty-free policy. In 2007, the approved standard rose to 3,000 yuan ($472). The move has largely stimulated trading activities.
　　The Xiamen Municipal Government then decided to renovate and expand the market and strengthen administration, expecting that it’ll become the biggest park and industrial base for trade and tourism across the Straits.
　　On September 6, 2011, the new Dadeng market, namely Dadeng Town, was inaugurated, marking a new era of the trade history between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan.
　　By the end of 2011, Dadeng Island had imported $196.96 million worth of Taiwanese commodities, according to the Information Office of the Xiamen Municipal Government.
　　The Dadeng Town market is expected to receive 2 million consumers, with the sales volume of Taiwanese commodities amounting to $60 million by 2012, according to Xiangyu Group, a Xiamen-based enterprise responsible for the Dadeng Town program.
　　


　　Targeting the future
　　About 80 percent of the products in the new market come from the central and southern parts of Taiwan, the heart of the island’s manufacturing base. The new market is slated to help Taiwanese expand their businesses and give mainland citizens a chance to buy authentic Taiwanese commodities at lower prices, said Chen Chunhui, Deputy General Manager of Xiangyu Group.
　　A symbol of people-to-people exchanges across the Taiwan Straits, the new market can give more small and micro Taiwanese companies a chance to survive and develop on the mainland, and even a chance to live a quite happy life here. “We can proudly say the essence of cross-Straits exchanges lies here in this market,” said Chen.
　　After several rounds of bidding, Liu Wenchung got a three-year valid authorization to sell authentic souvenirs of the Taipei-located“National Palace Museum.”
　　Different from other authorized souvenir shops in Taipei, where souvenirs imitating Jadeite Cabbage, one of the most famous works on display at the museum, are the most popular, calligraphy and painting works are the most demanded products here, said Liu.“Tourists and Xiamen locals would drive to the market to buy the calligraphy and painting works at weekends.”
　　After a sea tunnel connecting Xiamen to Dadeng Island was opened, travel time has been halved to only 30 minutes.
　　“The business is not so good right now because this market was newly opened in September 2011, but I remain confident in the future of it,” said Liu.
　　“Opening a new market place for real, authentic and quality goods are beneficial for us authorized sellers. We don’t sell shabby and counterfeited products and consumers are likely to gradually transfer from the old market to the new one,” said Liu.
　　“We only sell 100-percent natural stones, such as crystal, amber and jade, and I make it a point to teach consumers how to tell the difference between natural products and fakes,”said Wang. “It’s one of our ways of winning over customers: with trust and loyalty.”
　　Although business in the new market has been mediocre at best, Wang is quite confident in its prospects.
　　“I’ve invested over 5 million yuan($785,500) in this store and it has yet turned into profit. However, when evaluating a market, you should see the future,” said Wang.
　　“Anyone with any business sense can predict that this marketplace is bound to prosper in the near future,” he said.