The commerce imperative among the Chinese is beginning to swamp the long-standing animosity and sense of politacal outrage, and Taiwan is considering jointly renting a telecommunications network with China to transfer telephone calls between the two, instead of them having to go via a third country as at present, officials of the Communications Ministry in Taipei said: Taiwan and China would rent a telecommunications network in what the Ministry called a ‘third place’ instead of a third country – it could be by satellite or by cable; the shift could save each side annual telephone call transfer fees of $11m to $15m charged by third country firms; Taiwan had banned direct links with China since the civil war between the two ended in 1949.
