A Chinese official on Sunday was quoted as saying that Taiwanese-registered vehicles could be allowed to travel on Chinese roads in the first half of this year at the earliest.
Such vehicles are only allowed to travel on Pingtan Island in China’s Fujian Province at present. The new measure reportedly would allow drivers to proceed from Pingtan to China proper.
Fujian Communications Department Director Zhang Zhaomin (張兆民) was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying that his department has proposed a set of regulations governing plate management, insurance and other related matters.
Once the proposal has been approved, Taiwanese visitors, tour groups and families would be able to drive their own cars or buses to China via Pingtan, where they would have to change to China-issued plates, Zhang said.
The measure could be expanded to cover trucks, so that Taiwanese companies could transport their products directly to China, he said, adding that Xiamen and other coastal cities could be added to the list of such open ports.
Fujian authorities have over the past few years been calling on Taiwan to announce reciprocal measures without getting any response from the Mainland Affairs Council.
The council in January said that it was not considering allowing Chinese vehicles on the nation’s roads, calling China’s permission for Taiwanese vehicles on Pingtan Island a “unilateral” policy.
Chinese vehicles would be given permits to travel in Taiwan only in “special cases,” such as for disaster relief, trade shows and tests for research and development purposes, the council said.
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:
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