Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said yesterday that with the impending arrival of independent Chinese tourists in Taiwan, he expects medical tourism to attract between 2,000 and 9,000 Chinese every year.
“This will create NT$5 billion [US$173.12 million] in revenues,” Wang said in an address to an international medical tourism forum sponsored by the Bureau of Foreign Trade, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and the Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry (IBMI).
Starting from Tuesday, the new free independent traveler (FIT) scheme will allow up to 500 Chinese tourists a day to visit Taiwan independently, instead of as part of a tour group.
Speaking in his capacity as IBMI founder, Wang yesterday said revenues of the international medical care market in Asia was about US$4.4 billion a year, compared with Taiwan’s NT$4.4 billion in revenues last year.
“With Taiwan’s superior medical professionals, its medical services — which are on a par with those in Europe and the United States — and comparatively lower fees, medical tourism will become a major industry for the country,” he said.
He said Taiwan could attract independent Chinese tourists for physical checkups or cosmetic -surgery. Taiwan should also relax the restrictions on the length of time Chinese tourists are allowed to stay in Taiwan to allow them time to convalesce after major surgery, he said.
TAITRA chairman Wang Chih-kang (王志剛) said that about 3,700 foreign nationals came to Taiwan for medical treatment over the past two years, most of them Chinese.
“Language is Taiwan’s edge in developing medical tourism. Taiwanese medical professionals can communicate with overseas Chinese and they can also speak English to communicate with non-Mandarin-speaking foreign patients,” Wang Chih-kang said.
Meanwhile, according to local travel agencies, a majority of the first batch of independent Chinese tourists scheduled to enter Taiwan are young executives from technology companies who have mostly sought accommodation in five-star hotels.
Yeh Yu-hsiang (葉宇翔), the inbound department manager of Lion Travel, said the company has a total of 17 people on the FIT program from Shanghai, all aged under 40, with the majority being executives of medium-sized companies or high-tech firms.
Many have opted to stay at the Regent Taipei hotel, which is close to major attractions such as Taipei 101, Yeh said.
Paul Hsu (許永裕), vice president of South East Travel, said the company so far has about 40 tourists on the FIT program from Beijing.
Most of the tourists, aged from 30 to 40, are interested in visiting Ximending (西門町) — a popular gathering place for young people in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華) — and Yongkang Street in Daan District (大安), where many famous restaurants are located, Hsu said.
This could explain why most of them decided to stay at the Taipei Garden Hotel, which is close to both attractions, he said.
Other popular hotels among the FIT tourists include the Grand Hyatt Taipei, the Sunworld Dynasty Taipei and the Ambassador Hotel, Hsu said.
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