As president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) prepares to assume office on Friday next week, China has been maneuvering to limit the number of Chinese allowed to visit Taiwan. This is a worrying development for the tourism industry, but it could also provide an opportunity for innovation and renewal.
From the time cross-strait tourism was relaxed, Taiwanese travel agencies have continually fought for an increase in the number of Chinese tourists allowed to visit Taiwan. Beijing was more than happy to oblige, permitting more Chinese to travel to Taiwan to boost profits on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and burnish the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) record of achievements.
However, along with the relaxation, Chinese tourists seem to have taken over Taiwan’s scenic areas and historical sites, crowding out both local and other international tourists, and destroying the quality of domestic tourism. It has also affected the quality of life of Taiwanese in the same way that people in Hong Kong have been negatively affected by Chinese tourism.
Tour fees for Chinese tour groups vary among Taiwanese travel agencies, but are, on average, between US$30 and US$50 per person per day. This includes accommodation, tickets, transportation, food and drinks. This is a bit on the low side and could mean losses for some local travel agencies, which try to make up for it by earning commission on sales at tourist spots.
Shopping tours have become the largest niche for Taiwanese travel agencies. Diamonds and coral, though not produced in Taiwan, are billed as “local specialties” to entice Chinese tourists into buying them, along with local specialties such as pineapple cakes and oolong tea. Some shops pay a commission to travel agencies for these purchases, which, if known, makes Chinese tourists feel cheated.
However, along with the political changes in Taiwan, Chinese authorities have lately begun controlling the number of Taiwanese travel permits they issue and restrict the number of Chinese allowed to travel here, due to what they say are “unclear cross-strait policies.”
This is a textbook example of politics meddling in economic affairs and comes as no surprise to anyone. This affects Taiwan because, even though some of the tour buses, restaurants and hotels are partly Chinese-owned, most of the people they employ are Taiwanese. The possible unemployment that might result is an issue that the incoming government will have to address.
The upshot of this is it gives Taiwan a chance to reconsider what kind of tourists it wants, as well as the kind of tourism industry it wants to foster. Chinese tour groups are currently limited to 5,000 people per day, but they are already taking over all of the nation’s tourism resources and have become a target of local criticism.
Taiwanese travel agencies have resorted to cutthroat pricing competition to attract Chinese tourists, and that is another aspect that urgently needs to be addressed. The government cannot afford to let Chinese tourism — which can easily become a tool for political manipulation by Beijing — be seen as a recipe to help resolve the unemployment problem. It would only make things worse by inviting disaster.
Beijing may be stopping Chinese nationals from visiting Taiwan for political reasons, but it is in fact offering Taiwan’s tourism industry a perfectly good reason for reform. Just as in other businesses, it is necessary to reduce dependence on a single supplier, one target market and pricing competition.
As the shrinking number of Chinese tourists poses a political risk for the incoming Tsai administration, it will have to propose a new set of tourism policies aimed at developing international tourism and reducing dependence on China.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS