The annual Lantern Festival will continue, but the central government is considering whether the festival should be hosted by the Tourism Bureau or by county governments, the bureau said in a statement on Saturday.
The Tourism Bureau said it had held the Lantern Festival for 20 years and that it was an important tourist attraction that had drawn a number of both domestic and international tourists.
This year’s Lantern Festival will be held in Ilan starting on Feb. 2. The bureau estimates it would draw approximately 5,000 foreign tourists.
However, the festival still has room for improvement in terms of content and scale, it said.
The bureau issued the statement following a China Times report that said the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) was assessing whether the Tourism Bureau should continue hosting the annual event after this year.
The report also said that the bureau could decide to cancel the event after the evaluation.
The Chinese-language report quoted MOTC Minister Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) as saying that after the government decided to change the event’s name from the “Taipei Lantern Festival” to the “Taiwan Lantern Festival” and change the venues of the festival every year, there have been complaints from some Japanese travel agencies that the changes made it difficult for them to arrange tour schedules.
Some travel agencies said they could not even put the festival on their schedules because the announcement of the new location comes too late.
“Given that local governments are also equipped with marketing resouces, there is a need for us to redefine the Lantern Festival,” the report quoted Mao as saying.
The Chinese military has built landing bridge ships designed to expand its amphibious options for a potential assault on Taiwan, but their combat effectiveness is limited due to their high vulnerability, a defense expert said in an analysis published on Monday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the deployment of such vessels as part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s East Sea Fleet signals a strong focus on Taiwan. However, the ships are highly vulnerable to precision strikes, which means they could be destroyed before they achieve their intended
About 4.2 million tourist arrivals were recorded in the first half of this year, a 10 percent increase from the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. The growth continues to be consistent, with the fourth quarter of this year expected to be the peak in Taiwan, the agency said, adding that it plans to promote Taiwan overseas via partnerships and major events. From January to June, 9.14 million international departures were recorded from Taiwan, an 11 percent increase from the same period last year, with 3.3 million headed for Japan, 1.52 million for China and 832,962 to South Korea,
SOVEREIGNTY: The rigs show that Beijing ‘rejects Taiwan’s jurisdiction’ by building in areas where Taipei demands permission to build or alter installations Chinese oil rigs have been sighted just 26 nautical miles (42km), from Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島), posing a threat to Taiwan’s sovereignty if left unchallenged, a brief published by the Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday said. Pratas Island, 444km from Kaohsiung, is northeast of the South China Sea and houses a Taiwanese garrison. The brief, titled “Rigging the Game: PRC Oil Structures Encroach on Taiwan’s Pratas Island” — referring to the People’s Republic of China — analyzed photographs and said that Beijing’s tools to pressure Taiwan now include oil rigs. “Oil rigs now constitute part of Beijing’s
The Taiwan Experience Education Program (TEEP) has funded short-term internships in Taiwan for more than 4,500 young people from more than 40 countries since 2015, with the goal of attracting and retaining international talent, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. Fifty-five colleges launched 514 projects this year, including in fields such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, medicine and biotechnology, green energy, and sustainability, it said. The program provides research and practical internships in Taiwan for two to six months, and offers cultural exchange and networking opportunities, the ministry said. For example, National Formosa University’s Embedded System and Autopilot Laboratory developed two solar-powered drones in
RSS