The Chinese mainland's Taiwan affairs chief said Friday that the primary task of the cross-Strait exchanges is to improve mutual understanding between people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Wang Yi, director of the Taiwan Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks at a meeting with a delegation of Taiwan's Mazu fellowship society.

Among cross-Strait exchanges, people-to-people exchanges were the most basic and direct contact among the people across the Taiwan Strait and was the most effective, he said.

Wang said he would like to see more people at the grassroots level in Taiwan visit the mainland so they might see for themselves the mainland's great changes and progress and personally feel the brotherhood that the people in the mainland have towards them.

He also urged the Chinese compatriots across the Taiwan Strait to work together to create a brighter future for cross-Strait relations.

The Mazu belief, named after a goddess who can forecast the weather at sea for fishermen, has 17 million followers in Taiwan.

Cross-Strait exchanges have got a boost since the signing of the Economic Cooperation Agreement Framework, a trade and economic pact, in June.

The latest development in closer economic ties is the signing of a contract to establish the first cross-Strait online trading market for agricultural products.

The contract was signed on Friday in Taipei between a mainland company ,which runs such an online market in east China's Zhejiang province, and a Taiwanese agricultural association.

The online trade market is expected to raise the competitiveness of the two sides' agricultural products in the international market.