Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said recently at a tourism forum that the government’s target of 6 million foreign tourists this year would be reached by the middle of next month. Through the cooperation between the central and local governments and between the public and private sectors, the government’s goal for next year is to bring 12 million foreign tourists into Taiwan, Chen said. The government has set a high goal for next year, as it hopes to best the record for foreign tourists visiting Taiwan, which was set at 11.86 million in 2019.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign tourist arrivals in 2020 plunged 88.39 percent from the previous year to 1.38 million, and the number fell further the following year to a meager 140,000, the lowest in at least half a century, the Tourism Administration’s statistics showed. Last year, Taiwan welcomed around 900,000 foreign visitors as pandemic restrictions gradually eased, with many countries including Taiwan slowly but steadily lifting border controls and quarantine measures for arrivals.
The government’s success in achieving its goal of 6 million foreign tourists this year over such a short period is in part due to a robust recovery in the international tourism market after the pandemic, but it is also the result of collective efforts from government agencies, travel agencies, hoteliers and other tourism business operators.
Moreover, the Tourism Administration was upgraded from the Tourism Bureau in September, with more resources and personnel being allocated and devoted to marketing Taiwan on the global stage. For instance, the agency has added offices across the world, including in Busan, Jakarta and Paris. It has also formulated aggressive marketing strategies, such as seeking endorsements from foreign celebrities, increasing Taiwan’s exposure through social media and influencers and offering prizes for independent travelers via lotteries.
However, is Taiwan truly ready for double the number of international tourist arrivals next year? In the past three to four years, the industries worst hit by the pandemic were hospitality and catering, with a number of businesses shutting down and many workers laid off. Insufficient staff is still one of the most serious issues besetting these industries today, prompting them to call on the government to help address the issue by easing migrant worker limits; otherwise they would see service quality deteriorate.
Yet the problems Taiwan’s tourism industry face are more than just a labor shortage. Overpriced hotel room rates, expensive local dining, little improvement in tourist attractions over the years and uncompetitive travel services relative to rival destinations in Asia are all structural issues threatening the development of the nation’s tourism sector.
Regarding the ban on tour groups across the Taiwan Strait, inconsistencies among government agencies pose yet another challenge, as the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has said it plans to ease the ban in March next year, while the Mainland Affairs Council still aims to cap the number at 2,000 per day for Chinese group travelers visiting Taiwan, and vice versa.
Taiwan is famous for its night markets, but the days of relying solely on a variety of local delicacies and snacks to attract tourists are gone, and many night markets all look the same and sell the same kinds of stuff.
As a result, the government must conduct a comprehensive review of the tourism industry and address the industry’s structural problems.
Blindly pursuing increases in the number of foreign arrivals and ignoring overall improvements in quality would leave Taiwan at a disadvantage in the fiercely competitive market of international tourism.
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS