Prof Chen Xi, executive vice president and chief executive secretary of CAST, recently expressed that CAST will actively support establishment of Pingtan Integrated Experimental Zone. 

Pingtan Integrated Experimental Zone is located in Pingtan, a county covering a set of offshore islands south-east to Fuzhou, capital city of Fujian Province. Pingtan County is the closest county to Taiwan with an area of 392.92 square meters and composed of 126 islands and thousands of islets, among which, Hantan island is the fifth largest island in China. The aims of establishing Pingtan Integrated Experimental Zone are to explore ways for cross strait regional cooperation, to establish regional platform for close cross strait cooperation, and to build Pingtan as an demonstrating zone for exploring new model for cross straits cooperation and an advancing zone of scientific development in west strait bank economic region. 

Chen Xi pointed out that CAST shall make full use of its featured advantage to support the establishment of Pingtan Integrated Experimental Zone in three areas: to support the setup of S&T exchange platform across the straits to promote the integration of S&T and industry; to assist the experimental zone to attract oversea talents including talents from countries advanced in high technology industry; and to support the development of high technology industry in the experimental zone and attract entrepreneur talents, especially in marine industry.