Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Chinese National Tourism Administration director Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉) yesterday pledged to work together to promote cross-strait tourism and bring more Chinese tourists to Taipei, with Chinese tourists now making up the largest group of tourists visiting Taipei.
Shao, who led a Chinese delegation to a round-table meeting with travel industry representatives from both side of the Strait, invited Taipei to join other world cities in China to promote tourism.
“The number of Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan has reached 990,000 this year, and over 90 percent of Chinese tourists come to Taipei City. We have high expectations for the continuous growth of cross-strait tourism,” Shao said during a visit to Taipei’s Songshan Cultural Park.
In China, Beijing is working to form a tourism association with the world’s major cities to promote city-to-city tourism. China is inviting major cities from around the world to join the association and as a tourist destination, Taipei should participate in the group and get the opportunity to meet representatives of other major cities to discuss tourism, Shao said.
Hau lauded cross-strait tourism as an effective way to promote exchanges between Taiwan and China and deepen mutual relations, and promised to create a friendlier environment for tourism in Taipei.
“People across the Taiwan Strait are of the same blood. Through cross-strait tourism, we should develop a better understanding of each other. This is a great way to promote cross-strait relations,” he said.
The city government is focusing its efforts on promoting Chinese tourism because the number of Chinese cities that allow individual visits to Taiwan will increase from nine to 13 by the end of this year.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift