The travel industry and airlines said they were ready to cope with the repercussions of the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) decision to raise the travel alert for China to yellow after Beijing confirmed its first case of swine flu in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
Tourism Bureau Deputy Director General David Hsieh (謝謂君) said his agency would send out official notices informing travel agencies of the change.
MAC follows the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ three-color travel advisory.
A Yellow Alert means travelers should exercise caution.
The Tourism Bureau said travelers were entitled to cancel their group tour if they were scheduled to travel to countries on the “Yellow Alert” list and refunds for the tours should be handled under Article 27 of regulations governing the stipulations of standardized contracts between travel agents and their customers.
Customers who cancel their trips more than 31 days in advance are eligible for a 90 percent refund, while those who do so three weeks in advance are eligible for an 80 percent refund. Customers are entitled to a 50 percent refund if they call off their trip the day before the scheduled departure.
However, customers who wait until their scheduled departure date to cancel their trip will not be eligible for a refund.
Meanwhile, Roget Hsu (許高慶), secretary-general of the Travel Agent Association, said the number of travelers heading to Sichuan dropped drastically after last May’s earthquake, although the numbers recently began picking up after China Airlines (CAL) and EVA Airways (EVA) started offering direct charter flights to Chengdu.
As some Chinese tourists from Sichuan arrived in Taiwan on charter flights, both CAL and EVA said yesterday they would comply with government efforts to prevent the spread of the virus.
CAL said it would sterilize aircraft returning from flights to H1N1-infected countries and would hand out face masks to passengers showing symptoms.
EVA said it would check if any passengers have a fever and provide face masks if necessary.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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