Pingtan in Southeast China's Fujian province has seen increasingly frequent personnel exchanges with Taiwan.

As of October, a total of 105,263 people commuted between Pingtan and Taiwan by sea, an uptick of 26.2 percent over the same period last year, according to government statistics released recently.

In 2011, Pingtan opened direct shipping routes to Taiwan, and so far more than 635,000 cross-Straits residents have travelled on the high-speed passenger ferries including Haixia and Lina shuttling between the two places.

As the closest place on the mainland to Taiwan, Pingtan has been actively building itself to be a common homeland for cross-Straits residents since 2015, when the city became part of the China (Fujian) Pilot Free Trade Zone, with an emphasis on further opening-up cross-Straits communication.

As of the end of July, more than 3,000 Taiwan residents and 863 Taiwan companies has settled down in the city.

Zhang Zhaomin, Party chief of the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone, said it expects to attract more than 200,000 Taiwan tourists, as well as drawing about 10,000 of the island's residents to live or work in Pingtan by 2021.

By that date, the number of registered Taiwan-invested companies is expected to reach 2,000, with a total investment value of $20 billion, he said.

Passengers board the Haixia, a high-speed passenger ferry sailing for Taiwan, at the Aoqian Roll-on/off Wharf in Pingtan, Fujian province. [Photo/Xinhua]