Taipei, May 15 (CNA) A high-level delegation from China will visit Taiwan to attend a cross-Taiwan Strait conference on biotechnology and medical equipment later this month.

Johnsee Lee, chairman of the Development Center for Biotechnology, said He Luli, former vice chairwoman of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee, will lead a 100-member delegation for the May 25-26 meeting in Taipei.

He’s delegation will include officials from the Ministry of Health, State Food and Drug Administration, State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine and heads of Chinese medical care industry.

This will be the highest-level medical exchange Taiwan and China have ever had, according to Lee.

"Taiwan’s bottleneck in developing its biotech industry is its limited market, and the Chinese market can serve as a platform for Taiwan’s biotech sector to make inroads into the international market," Lee said.

Lee noted that even though He will come in her capacity as the honorary president of the Cross-Straits Medicine Exchange Association, she still carries political weight by virtue of having served as the vice chairwoman of the NPC Standing Committee.

An Min, deputy president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, will accompany her on the visit.

Among the topics expected to be covered at the conference include promoting GLP (good laboratory practice) , GMP (good manufacturing practice) and GCP (good clinical practice) , as well as the standardization of commonly used terms in the two countries.

The conference will kick off a "cross-strait bridge-building project" this year.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs first launched the project in late 2008, hoping to enhance cross-strait industrial exchanges based on a formula of exchanges in the first year, consultations in the second year and cooperation in the third year.

Last year, 11 sectors were included in the project, and this year, it has been expanded to 15 sectors. (By Yang Shu-ming and Lilian Wu) enditem/ls