The government agency in charge of relations with China said yesterday it would allow multinational corporations to bring in more employees from China for regional company meetings, addressing a key business demand on the issue.
Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Chairman Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said the current limit of 30 Chinese visitors per meeting would be expanded, indicating that applications for "hundreds of visitors" could be approved.
"The [present] maximum limit doesn't fit the demands of the time," he said.
Visits to Taiwan by travelers from China are strictly limited because of the nominally hostile relations between the two countries.
The government of President Chen Shui-bian (
On a related issue, Wu reaffirmed earlier indications that, by the end of the year, tourists from China will be allowed to visit Taiwan without passing through a third location.
Negotiations on the issue are underway between Taiwanese and Chinese officials, Wu said.
Wu said that the MAC's negotiations with the Chinese government had gone well and more details would be announced shortly.
"Currently, approximately 300 Chinese employees of Microsoft Corp have applied to come to Taiwan for a meeting, and we are working on it ... I am quite sure that more Chinese visitors will be approved and allowed to visit Taiwan before the end of this year," Wu said.
He added that for now, Chinese visitors would still be required to transit through a third location, such as Hong Kong or Macau, before entering Taiwan.
However, Wu said that the government was considering allowing Chinese visitors to take direct charter flights across the Taiwan Strait.
"If the current climate for talks between Taiwan and China persists, we can allow 1,000 Chinese tourists a day to visit, beginning four or five months from now," Wu said.
Also, Taiwan plans to relax restrictions on currency exchanges with China when it allows more Chinese tourists to visit, which could happen as early as October, Wu said yesterday.
Chinese tourists should be able to convert their yuan currency directly into New Taiwan dollars on a trial basis, Wu said, after conversions were allowed on two outlying islands last October.
The pilot scheme would allow Chinese travelers to avoid the hassle and expense of changing yuan into NT dollars via a third currency, a move that would bring financial ties slightly closer.
"This is a standard amenity for tourism," Wu said after a news conference. "We're asking the central bank about carrying out the necessary legwork. Before that work is done, we cannot discuss too many details."
Taiwan's central bank said it was ready to roll out the currency plans.
"We're all prepared," said a central bank official who declined to be identified.
Wu's comments came in the wake of last week's government-sponsored economic forum, which featured discussions on Taiwanese commercial relations with China.
That meeting produced few indications of coming commercial liberalization with Beijing, despite pressure from Taiwan's powerful business community to soften China policies.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JIMMY CHUANG
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has