The Executive Yuan said it was considering raising the quota on Chinese tourists allowed to travel to Taiwan after 37 tourists from Shenyang, Liaoning Province, were sent back on Saturday because they did not have entry permits.
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said in Nantou on Friday that the adjustment was necessary because the number of Chinese traveling to Taiwan could hit 7,000 people per day by next month, adding that the number of tourists had exceeded 4,000 people per day over the past two days.
The Chinese-language United Evening News reported yesterday that the Executive Yuan had said no cross-strait negotiation was required to increase the quota.
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) told the Taipei Times yesterday that the adjustment would not require further negotiation with China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
He said that although the previous agreement signed by the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and ARATS had put the daily quota at 3,000 people, the agreement also mentioned that tourism officials on both sides of the Strait could adjust the quota without first engaging in discussions at the third round of cross-strait talks.
SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) are expected to sign three agreements during the talks to be held in Nanjing, China, from Friday to the following Wednesday.
Liu Te-shun said that it would be necessary to raise the daily quota given the “needs and market” in Taiwan.
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said that since January it had fined airlines or ships in 148 cases for carrying passengers to the nation who did not possess valid travel permits or visas.
A total of 323 similar cases occurred in 2007, with 403 cases last year, the agency said.
Thirty-seven Chinese tourists from Shenyang were sent back to China on Saturday for failing to secure entry permits to Taiwan.
The tour guide, who had obtained an entry permit, left with the group.
Roget Hsu (?y), Travel Agent Association (TAA) secretary general, said his association’s preliminary investigation showed that a travel agency in Shenyang had applied for entry permits on behalf of these tourists and their tour guide.
“But their applications did not arrive at the NIA until Thursday, and the tour group was scheduled to come on Saturday,” Hsu said. “None of the local travel agencies wanted to take over this group because it was too risky.”
The TAA is a private association assisting the government in reviewing visa applications for Chinese tourists. Chinese tourists first join a tour group formed in China, which is then taken over by a Taiwanese travel agency that guides them once they arrive.
Hsu said NIA officials used to work extra hours to review the applications of Chinese tourists so they could quickly obtain entry permits to Taiwan, but that was when there were not that many Chinese tourists.
However, he said the NIA’s workload had drastically increased as the average number of Chinese tourists had exceeded 3,000 per day. It was almost impossible for the NIA to finish reviewing the applications of the Shenyang group by the end of the week, Hsu said.
Hsu said that the Chinese government only approved the travel agency in Shenyang to organize tour groups to Taiwan after the second round of cross-strait talks.
“It was the agency’s first tour group to Taiwan and they probably thought the Taiwanese government would give them a break,” Hsu said. “I think they’ve learned their lesson this time.”
Hsu also said a visa application overload problem had occurred on Thursday, when 77 Chinese tourists arrived at Kaohsiung International Airport without entry permits.
Meanwhile, the NIA fined Xiamen Airlines NT$1.85 million (US$54,700) for allowing passengers without entry permits to board its aircraft.
The NIA called on tour companies yesterday to do its utmost to respect immigration rules after the 38 Chinese were sent back for attempting to enter Taiwan without proper travel documents.
NIA spokesman Hu Jing-fu (胡景福) told a press conference that the group of 37 people, including the tour guide, arrived at Songshan Airport in Taipei at 2:47pm on Saturday without adequate entry permits. The tour group also did not have an official registration number, Hu said.
The agency immediately notified Xiamen Airlines via its partner, TransAsia Airways, of its decision to bar the group from entering Taiwan. The entire group — including the tour guide, surnamed Wang, who was the only one with the proper documentation — was forced to return to its point of origin two hours later.
Angry passengers reportedly made a scene and demanded to be allowed to enter Taiwan, saying they had paid for their tour package and should be allowed in.
This was Xiamen Airway’s first time bringing a tour group to Taiwan on a charter flight. The agency believes the matter was an unintentional blunder by staff at the airport in Shengyang, the spokesman said.
To prevent similar problems in future, Hu said, the agency issued a letter stating protocol for Chinese passport holders entering Taiwan and urged all airlines to strictly adhere to the rules to protect the rights of their customers and to avoid fines.
Article 82 of the Immigration Act (出國及移民法) stipulates that pilots, ship captains or transportation operators will be fined between NT$20,000 and NT$100,000 for each person they bring to Taiwan without the proper paperwork.
Xiamen Airlines was slapped with a NT$1.85 million (US$55,000) fine for Saturday’s incident.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday asked the NIA to take responsibility for allowing two groups of Chinese tourists to enter the nation without entry permits last week.
DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said some Chinese tourists seemed to see Taiwan as part of China and defied Taiwan’s law and sovereignty.
He said that if the government continued to loosen restrictions on Chinese tourists entering the county, Taiwan would pay a high price.
Cheng said the NIA should take responsibility because it issued entry permits to two groups of Chinese tourists after they arrived at Kaohsiung International Airport on Wednesday of last week.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
FORCED LABOR: A US court listed three Taiwanese and nine firms based in Taiwan in its indictment, with eight of the companies registered at the same address Nine companies registered in Taiwan, as well as three Taiwanese, on Tuesday were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) as a result of a US federal court indictment. The indictment unsealed at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, said that Chen Zhi (陳志), a dual Cambodian-British national, is being indicted for fraud conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding Group’s forced-labor scam camps in Cambodia. At its peak, the company allegedly made US$30 million per day, court documents showed. The US government has seized Chen’s noncustodial wallet, which contains
SUPPLY CHAIN: Taiwan’s advantages in the drone industry include rapid production capacity that is independent of Chinese-made parts, the economic ministry said The Executive Yuan yesterday approved plans to invest NT$44.2 billion (US$1.44 billion) into domestic production of uncrewed aerial vehicles over the next six years, bringing Taiwan’s output value to more than NT$40 billion by 2030 and making the nation Asia’s democratic hub for the drone supply chain. The proposed budget has NT$33.8 billion in new allocations and NT$10.43 billion in existing funds, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said. Under the new development program, the public sector would purchase nearly 100,000 drones, of which 50,898 would be for civil and government use, while 48,750 would be for national defense, it said. The Ministry of
RSS