Though cross-strait charter flight services are scheduled to be launched this Friday, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) has yet to settle certain issues regarding the flight schedules.
CAA director general Billy Chang (張國政) said yesterday in the Legislature’s Transportation Committee that Mandarin Airlines had decided to cancel its pilot flight, as it had failed to attract enough customers.
The flight was originally scheduled to leave on Friday at 3:30am from Taoyuan to Nanjing.
On its return trip, the airplane will land in Taitung instead.
The cancellation of the flight made CAA the target of criticism from lawmakers, who said that the administration was not doing enough to help local governments in this regard.
Meanwhile, the Tourism Bureau confirmed yesterday that 687 Chinese tourists will be arriving at either the Taoyuan International Airport or Taipei’s Songshan Airport on Friday.
The tourists will be divided into 25 groups and will be received by eight Taiwanese travel agencies.
Earlier, the bureau had announced that 600 Chinese tourists would be arriving this weekend, who would then be divided into six groups after landing at six different airports around the nation.
Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉), chairman of the Cross-Strait Travel Association, will arrive as planned, the bureau said.
The first flight is scheduled to arrive at Taoyuan from Guangzhou at 8:10am on Friday.
Meanwhile, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators said yesterday that chaos would ensue as the government was not ready for the inauguration of regular cross-strait charter flights.
DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) told a press conference at the legislature that the government had not elaborated on security measures and epidemic control at airports for the cross-strait charter flights.
She said the government should open the country to Chinese tourists step by step, not in a rush.
She said that the government welcomes Chinese tourists while it ignores tourists from other countries, which is unfavorable to the tourism industry.
DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said the number of Taiwanese tourists to China is expected to increase to over 6 million per year soon after the inauguration of regular cross-strait charter flights.
Taiwanese tourist are expected to spend around NT$180 billion (US$6 billion) in China per year.
But because China will only allow 1,000 tourists to visit Taiwan per day, which analysts say will only bring in around NT$10 billion per year in revenue.
Following the disappearance of three Chinese tourists from their hotel in Jhongli, Taoyuan County, on Friday morning, Lin said the opening of Taiwan to Chinese tourists would open a channel to those Chinese who want to illegally immigrate to Taiwan.
Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation and its Chinese counterpart, the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, reached an agreement on cross-strait charter flights on June 13.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods