About 10 percent of Japanese tour groups with bookings to visit Taiwan have canceled their travel plans amid a territorial dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), local media reported.
Located about 185km northeast of Taiwan, the Diaoyutais — known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan — have been under Japan’s control since 1972, but are also claimed by Taiwan and China.
Citing travel service providers, the reports said the cancellations were mainly caused by concern among Japanese tourists about possible unpleasant encounters with Chinese visitors during their stay in Taiwan.
Most of the cancellations involved corporate incentive tours, the reports said, adding that some Japanese schools have canceled Taiwan-bound short-term study programs because school authorities were concerned about their students’ safety.
Amid the escalation of tensions between China and Japan over the Diaoyutais, nearly 80 percent of Japanese tour groups have dropped their China travel plans since late last month and some of them have shifted their tour itineraries to Taiwan.
However, the situation changed after Taiwanese and Japanese coast guard officers engaged in a water-cannon altercation in waters near the Diaoyutais on Sept. 25.
The Japanese news media’s extensive coverage of the incident led ordinary Japanese citizens to perceive that Taiwan, Hong Kong and China were collaborating to fight against Japan over the Diaoyutais issue.
This misperception further caused would-be Japanese visitors to worry about their travel safety and cancel their Taiwan travel plans, the reports said.
The long-simmering territorial dispute came to a head last month, after Japan nationalized the island cluster by buying three islets from their private owner on Sept. 11 in an attempt to reinforce its sovereignty claim.
The move sparked widespread protests in China that hurt Japanese businesses.
Sanpu Travel Service Co chairman Hsieh Hsien-chih (謝憲治) said Japanese tourist arrivals in Taiwan increased 18 percent year-on-year in the first eight months of this year.
The September-to-November period tends to be a peak season for Japanese tourist arrivals, Hsieh said.
“However, this year the number of Japanese citizens planning to visit Taiwan during that period has seen a 20 percent to 30 percent decline,” Hsieh said. “My company alone has received cancellation requests from about 1,000 Japanese who were originally scheduled to tour Taiwan in October.”
As a consequence, he said, the annual growth rate of Japanese tourist arrivals for this year could be limited.
International Tour Operation Co deputy general manager Lee Ta-wen (李大文) said he hoped the curtain would soon come down on the islet row, because it has had an increasingly serious impact on the local tourism industry.
Nearly 10 percent of Japanese corporate incentive tour reservations for next month have been canceled over safety concerns, Lee said.
Tourism Bureau officials said the bureau’s branch in Japan has met with Japanese city or prefecture tourist offices and education commissions to brief them on the measures adopted by Taiwan to ensure visitors’ safety.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS