The Council of Agriculture is working on a plan to market the nation’s quality agricultural products to Chinese tourists, who are expected to visit Taiwan in greater numbers beginning next month.
Details of the project are still being thrashed out, council Minister Chen Wu-hsiung (陳武雄) said yesterday, but the plan would involve having Chinese tourists order fruit while in Taiwan and pick it up in China.
Chen said he had instructed the council’s staff to pay special attention to issues such as quarantine restrictions and product delivery and pickup to make the plan work.
The council plans to set up an exhibition hall to showcase Taiwan’s quality farm products at one of the top destinations for Chinese tourists. It has talked to the National Palace Museum and the Alishan National Scenic Area Administration about the possibility of setting up such a hall under their jurisdiction.
The council hopes to select a location and operator for the hall by the end of August, it said.
The government will fund part of the operating cost, but the contractor for the project will have to work with travel agents to attract Chinese tourists, it said.
Even though the council has confidence in the competitiveness and quality of Taiwanese fruit and agricultural products, choosing the right logistics and distribution companies to handle home delivery and after-sales service is crucial to success, the council said.
The government allows exports of 22 varieties of Taiwan-grown fruits to China, including the top four — mangoes, pineapples, guavas and wax apples — favored by Chinese.
Some of the top 100 agricultural products selected by the council have also been given open access to the Chinese market.
The council plans to collaborate with airport duty free shops and airline companies to enable Chinese tourists to place farm product orders at the shops or on airplanes.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching