The nation's top China policy planner said yesterday that when Chinese citizens will be allowed to visit Taiwan as tourists hinges on Beijing's approval.
Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Chen Ming-tong (
It is now up to Beijing to determine when Chinese citizens will be allowed to travel to Taiwan, Chen said, adding that if Beijing gave its approval, the program could be implemented this year.
Chen made the remarks in response to a question by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chien-ting (黃健庭), who said that Chinese tourists would be a major force helping to boost Taiwan's sagging tourism industry and asked Chen when the government would allow Chinese tourists to enter.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (
Meanwhile, Su also said that opening the nation to Chinese tourists was just a part of the overall strategy to attract international tourists, saying that Taiwan has resolved to attract more tourists from all over the world.
The pop group F4, which visited Japan and South Korea to promote Taiwan's tourism industry at the invitation of the Tourism Bureau, drew 5,000 of its Japanese and Korean fans to Taipei last week, Su added.
The MAC earlier this year said that Taiwanese representatives had reached a consensus with China on allowing 1,000 Chinese visitors to come to Taiwan per day for sightseeing.
According to rules jointly formulated by the MAC, the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Chinese who are permitted to come to Taiwan fall into three categories: visitors coming for sightseeing via Hong Kong and Macau; visitors coming after or before they visit a third country or conduct business trips overseas; and visitors residing abroad permanently or studying overseas.
If all the negotiations on the tourist issue are settled, these three categories will be canceled and Chinese visitors will no longer be categorized according to these rules, according to the council.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
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