The dwindling number of Chinese and other foreign tourists visiting Taiwan since the government opened up to Chinese passport holders last year is evidence that the “three links” policy has been ineffective, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.
“When Taiwan first opened up to Chinese tourists in July last year, the initial figure was around 300 to 400 a day. At that time, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) promised that the numbers would pick up over the following months and reach 3,000 a day. Except for April and May, however, the average has only been 1,307 Chinese tourists a day,” DPP policy division deputy executive-secretary Liu Chien-hsin (劉建忻) said.
The DPP is expected next week to release an assessment report on the impact on tourism, air and sea routes, and agriculture since the opening of the “three links” — direct air and sea transportation, as well as mail services across the Taiwan Strait — in November last year.
Liu said that, compared with the small number of Chinese tourists that visit Taiwan, China receives on average 11,897 Taiwanese tourists per day.
“It is obvious who is benefiting from the opening of the three links,” he said.
Moreover, while the Ma government boasted that NT$60 billion (US$1.8 billion) would be brought in by Chinese tourists, the actual revenue was only NT$32.8 billion, slightly more than half of the expected amount, he said.
Ma also promised that 40,000 new job opportunities would be created as a result of raising the cap on Chinese tourists, but in reality there were 13,200 less jobs since the deal was signed, Liu said.
In addition to the low numbers of tourists from China, foreign travelers from other major developed countries, such as the US, Japan, South Korea and European nations, had also dropped, Liu said.
DPP figures showed that as at the end of September, the number of Japanese tourists was 8.31 percent fewer than in the same period last year. Tourist numbers from the US and Europe also fell, by 7.65 percent and 2.1 percent respectively.
The largest decline was in the number of tourists from South Korea, 38.56 percent lower, he said.
The over-reliance on Chinese visitors is both dangerous and counterproductive, Liu said, adding that Chinese tourists on average spend US$30 less than other foreign visitors.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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