The Chinese mainland and Taiwan are closer to more cooperation on the economic front when top negotiators from both sides decided yesterday to start the push for a free-trade deal across the Taiwan Straits.

The decision to launch the negotiation for an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) came after Beijing's top envoy Chen Yunlin met his Taiwan counterpart Chiang Pin-kung for their fourth round of talks since June last year.

Also yesterday, the negotiators also signed three agreements during the negotiators' meeting in Taichuang, central Taiwan, on labor cooperation in the fishing industry, cooperation in inspection and quarantine of farm produce, and cooperation in standards measuring, inspection and certification.

Representing the authorities in Beijing and Taiwan, the two organizations - the ARATS and SEF - began their fourth round of talks since June last year after a 10-year suspension. The two sides have inked nine deals in the previous three meetings.

The mainland has been working hard to normalize its economic relations with Taiwan. It seeks solutions to problems in trade, investment and finance under the framework of the ARATS and the SEF. The agreements the mainland and Taiwan that have been inked have brought convenience and momentum to the economic and social exchange between the two sides.

It is important that the two sides have the vision to work more closely together, putting aside the sensitive issues and coming down to the more practical ones that matter to the people more directly. The topics at this round of the talks are very practical and concrete, and are likely to lead to more pragmatic benefits across the Taiwan Straits.

The next big goal the two sides face will be the ECFA, or an all-round framework for cross-Straits economic cooperation. Experts from the two sides have already done some joint research on the matter.

Wang Yi, director of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, announced that negotiations on the ECFA would top the agenda of the cross-Straits relations now and at the next stage.

A complete economic cooperation agreement with the mainland is a vision Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou came up with in his 2008 campaign. If the agreement, which he later named ECFA and accepted by the mainland authorities, can be obtained, it would yield more positive results in the economic development of the two sides, especially Taiwanese business people with investment interests in the mainland.

The eagerness in the business community is understandable now that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will finalize its free trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea in the coming 2010. Business people from Taiwan deserve a similar mechanism to insure their interests.

Some figures from the island's Democratic Progressive Party opposed to Ma's proposal, alleging that it would somehow "dwarf" the island. But it is plain that such frameworks of economic cooperation, neither those between the Chinese mainland and Hong and Macao - called closer economic partnership arrangements (CEPAs), nor those already signed or to be signed between China and other countries, have and could ever produce a mystic "dwarfing" effect, in real or in figurative sense. Instead, they can only promote the partners' interests to a high level.

A really down-to-earth approach is to try to hammer out the details of the would-be ECFA, to make them really effective and helpful for the people it is intended for.