A tour package proposed by a state-run travel agency in China to parts of Taiwan governed by the “pan-blue” alliance, headed by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), has drawn mixed responses.
Beijing-based China International Services this month launched the Taiwan Affairs Office-endorsed “Tour to ‘blue’ counties and cities” in Taiwan, the Chinese-language Apple Daily newspaper reported yesterday.
The six-day tour, priced at less than NT$20,000 (US$638), was proposed in line with Beijing’s call to visit pan-blue-governed counties and cities, the report said.
The heads of the cities and counties welcomed the idea, but Ting Yun-kung (丁允恭), spokesman of the “pan-green” Kaohsiung City Government, said Taiwan is a colorful place and that “it is a pity for people to discover only one color,” the Apple Daily said.
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) is considered a heavyweight in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which leads the pro-Taiwan independence “pan-green” camp.
Exchanges between Taiwan and China have cooled in many sectors, including tourism, since President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) inauguration on May 20.
The number of Chinese visiting Taiwan fell 32 percent in August from a year earlier, Tourism Bureau data showed, a decline some say has been engineered by the Chinese government.
Last month, a delegation of six KMT and two independent officials visited China to promote Taiwan’s agricultural produce and tourism. They were reportedly warmly received by Chinese authorities.
Asked about the controversial tour package, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), a KMT member, said he hoped Chinese tourists would continue to visit Taiwan and that Taiwan would maintain cooperative relations with China in agricultural and industrial sectors.
“It is just that we are a window and [we] hope more tourists will come to Taiwan,” Chu said.
Some criticized the tour package as China’s attempt to divide Taiwan, but Chu shrugged off the idea, saying that people open their arms to tourists in the same way as they welcome cross-strait industrial and agricultural cooperation.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said he doubted Beijing’s strategy is practical and feasible since the nation’s international airports in Taoyuan, Taichung and Kaohsiung are under pan-green administration.
“I do not believe Chinese tourists can just parachute into Taiwan,” Ko said, adding that the strategy would prove to be of no avail.
Ko said that Taipei would still try to attract Chinese visitors and it has plans to woo visitors from the ASEAN and Muslim countries.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
RSS