Tourism stocks advanced yesterday as media outlets in China reported that Beijing would announce regulations allowing more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan. The news boosted share prices of hoteliers such as Formosa International Hotels Corp (晶華) to record highs.
Formosa gained NT$3.1, or 6.4 percent, to close at NT$51.6. The Ambassador Hotel Ltd (國賓) rose NT$1.75 to NT$26.85, and Leofoo Development Co (六福) climbed NT$1.1 to NT$17.45, both reaching the upper limit of 7 percent on share price fluctuations.
"We welcome China's policy to ease its tourism ban, which will bring huge economic benefits to Taiwan," said Johnson Tseng (
In 2002, the government limited the number of visitors from China to 1,000 per day, or 365,000 a year, but because Beijing maintains strict controls on visits to Taiwan, only 19,000 Chinese tourists came to Taiwan for sightseeing last year, and 13,900 engaged in academic and business exchanges here, according to government statistics.
If the current quota of Chinese visitors were to be filled every day, the Taiwanese economy would receive an injection of NT$50 billion (US$1.6 billion) per year, Tseng said.
China consented allowing more of its citizens to visit Taiwan after meetings with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜).
One of China's official news agencies reported yesterday that the National Tourism Administration plans to announce concrete regulations on cross-strait tourism soon. Later in the afternoon Beijing said it would adjust its regulations in accordance with the capacity and conditions set by Taiwan, according to an official Chinese Web-based news publication.
To capitalize on an expected flood of tourists wanting to visit Taiwan, many travel agencies in China have come up with travel packages ranging in price from NT$4,000 to NT$8,000, according to China News Service.
Huang Hsin-chuan (黃信川), a vice president of sales at Lion Travel Service Co (雄獅旅行社), Taiwan's largest travel agency, said the agency is also preparing for an influx of visitors from China.
"All the local tourism-related businesses are pinning great hopes on the easing of restrictions, which we believe will greatly boost Taiwan's tourism industry," Huang said.
Lion Travel has already come up with several preliminary travel packages which include sightseeing spots that are popular with tourists from China, such as Sun Moon Lake, Alishan and Taroko Gorge, Huang said.
Tseng said the government should draw up laws to regulate local travel agencies before crowds of Chinese nationals start coming to Taiwan.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
France is developing domestic production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries with an eye on industrial independence, but Asian experts are proving key in launching operations. In the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which was inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, notably from South Korea and Malaysia, are training the local staff. Verkor is the third battery gigafactory to open in northern France in a region that has become known as “Battery Valley.” At the Automotive Energy Supply Corp (AESC) factory near the city of Douai, where production has been under way for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits. “They
RSS