President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Friday once again called for Japan to review what he considered an insufficient number of Japanese tourists visiting Taiwan in recent years, the third time he has aired such concerns in the past 15 days.
Ma told former Japanese deputy prime minister Katsuya Okada, a member of the Japanese House of Representatives, on Aug. 15 that “there is still room for your honorable country to improve” the number of its tourists visiting Taiwan, because it is far less than the number of Taiwanese visiting Japan.
When receiving new Japanese Representative to Taiwan Mikio Numata on Aug. 22, Ma urged Japan to “reflect upon” why there were only 780,000 Japanese visitors to Taiwan in the first half of the year, against 1.46 million Taiwanese tourists to Japan during the same period, adding that Taiwan has surpassed South Korea to become the largest source of tourists to Japan.
On Friday, at a meeting with members of Japan’s Kansai Association of Corporate Executives, Ma said that Japan could expect as many as 2.5 million tourists from Taiwan in a year, almost the same size as the combined number of visits by both sides when he took office six years ago.
“The only improvement needed to be made is that there are too few tourists coming from your honorable country to Taiwan. I hope that your honorable country could make more efforts [to improve the situation],” Ma said.
Repeatedly appealing to Japan in an accusatory tone seemed to suggest that Ma was serious about holding Japan responsible for the imbalance in tourist flows between the two countries.
According to the Tourism Bureau’s inbound tourism statistics last year, China continued to top the list of source countries, with 2.87 million trips made to Taiwan, or 35.8 percent of the 8.02 million visitors Taiwan received, followed by Japan (1.42 million, or 17.7 percent), Hong Kong and Macau (1.183 million, or 14.8 percent), and then the US (414,000, or 5.2 percent).
By area of residence, visitors from Asian countries accounted for 89.1 percent of Taiwan’s inbound tourists, or 7.14 million trips. Excluding China, Hong Kong and Macau, Japan is already the most important inbound market for Taiwan. Malaysia is the second-biggest Asian source country, with total visits of about 394,000 last year, or 4.9 percent.
Since July 2008 — two months after Ma took office — when Taiwan began allowing direct entry to Chinese tourists without having to pass through a third country as required by the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, and with the increasingly relaxed visa requirements, the lifting of the ban on independent tourists, and the ever-increasing daily quota, Chinese tourists have become indispensable for the nation’s tourism industry.
Compared with the number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan, which nearly tripled from 2009 to last year, during the same period the number of visitors from Japan to Taiwan grew by 42 percent, those from South Korea by 109 percent, from Southeast Asian countries by 136 percent, from countries in the Americas by 13.7 percent, from countries in Europe by 12.2 percent, from countries of Oceania by 17 percent and from African countries by 13.7 percent.
It is commendable that Ma has begun to look beyond China in the hunt for increased tourism, but he still has a lot to learn. Accusing Japan does not help Taiwan become a more appealing destination for international travelers. Enhancing the nation’s image and upgrading the quality of its tourism services depends on its own efforts. In a democratic country, a government should not dictate to its people which country they should visit.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
RSS