Agreements benefit all

Just as the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) president Chen Yunlin put it, it is all good stuff benefiting people on both sides.

Not just good. The agreements the ARATS and its Taiwan counterpart, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), signed yesterday present the best we can expect at this point.

The more recent concern about food safety aside, the agreements on direct flights, shipping and postal services were a dream come true. That dream lingered unfulfilled, ever since authorities on the mainland proposed to open up such links in a 1979 New Year's Day message to the people of Taiwan.