The legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday passed a resolution capping the quota for Chinese tourists at 5,000 people per day during the New Year, Lunar New Year and 228 Memorial Day holidays, adding that the restriction should also apply to Chinese tourists traveling as part of tour groups.
The resolution was passed in a bid to stop the Tourism Bureau from raising the daily quota for Chinese tourists traveling as part of tour groups from 5,000 to 8,000 people between now and Feb. 29.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yih-jin (葉宜津) said that Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Jian-yu (陳建宇) had promised to control the number of Chinese tourists entering the nation to maintain travel quality when the committee reviewed the bureau’s budget for the next fiscal year earlier in the legislative session.
However, the bureau said that it would increase the quota for Chinese tourists traveling in tour groups, which would be effective until Feb. 29, she said.
Meanwhile, she said the nation would also be observing the New Year, Lunar New Year and 228 Memorial Day holidays during this period of time and many Taiwanese would be traveling as well.
“You just know that travel quality hits its absolute worst during this period of time,” Yeh said.
“This essentially breaks the promise that Minister Chen had made,” she said.
Yeh said that raising the quota from 5,000 to 8,000 people per day would increase Chinese tourists traveling within the nation by 24,000 per day if they join an eight-day package tour of Taiwan.
She asked how people could enjoy their New Year’s Eve and Lunar New Year holidays when scenic spots are filled with tourists, adding that the increase would also affect the travel experience of international tourists.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said that the Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association, a semi-official representative office of China in Taiwan handling tourism-related affairs, has already informed travel agencies that they would reduce the Chinese tour groups to Taiwan before the presidential election next month.
She said President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration raised the quota for Chinese tourists so that it can ask DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ying-wen (蔡英文) that there would be no change in quotas for Chinese tourists if she is elected.
“The ministry should not manipulate issues regarding the number of Chinese tourists anymore; which is considered too much by some travel agents,” Kuan said.
Chen emphasized that raising the quota for Chinese tourists traveling as part of tour groups is only a short-term measure to stimulate the nation’s economy.
He said that the nation accommodates about 3,000 people from China per day under the free independent travel program (FIT) and the market still has room for more tourists.
To avoid concentration of tourists in the nation’s northern and central regions, Chen said that travel agents are booking tourists on trips to Taichung, Kaohsiung and Taitung County.
Tourism Bureau Director-General David Hsieh (謝謂君) said that numbers of Chinese tourists would only be slightly reduced before the elections.
Although the government has set a quota for Chinese FIT travelers at 5,000 per day, the quota has yet to be met, he said, adding that the bureau raised the quota for Chinese tourists traveling in tour groups at about the same time last year.
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