China yesterday opened its first office in Taiwan, celebrating the opening of the office of the quasi-official Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association with a gala dinner at the Grand Hotel in Taipei.
“The office has been established to promote exchanges and to boost travel across the Strait,” the association said in a statement.
China National Tourism Administration Commissioner Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉) attended the opening ceremony.
Fan Guishan (范貴山), chief secretary of the Cross-Strait Tourism Association, told Chinese media in Taipei this week that he was “proud and honored” to be assigned to his new post in charge of the association’s Taipei office.
“I had hoped to have the chance to visit Taiwan before, but I never dreamed that I would become the first director of the [tourism] office,” he was quoted by the China News Service as saying. “I am deeply moved by the Taiwanese people’s warmth.”
Fan and two aides came to Taipei in September last year to prepare for the opening of the office, which is located in the business district on Dunhua S Road (敦化南路).
On Tuesday, Taipei unveiled its new office in Beijing in the first swap of semi-official representative offices. The Tourism Bureau announced yesterday that Yang Ruey-tzhong (楊瑞宗), chief of the Third Directorate of Taiwan’s Executive, was chosen as the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association representative in Beijing, the first government official to be stationed in China.
At the opening ceremony in Beijing, Taiwanese tourism chief Janice Lai (賴瑟珍) hailed the move as a “new milestone” in the promotion of tourism exchanges between the two sides. Taiwanese authorities have said Taiwan saw higher tourism growth than anywhere else in Asia last year because of Chinese visitors.
The opening of the tourism offices comes as President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration aims to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China next month, saying it would boost growth and employment.
Critics say the planned pact jeopardizes Taiwan’s sovereignty and would make it too economically dependent on China.
George Tsai (蔡瑋), a political scientist at Taipei’s Chinese Culture University, said the opening of the tourism offices would boost ties with Beijing, but included some risks.
“This is a positive development in cross-strait ties and a step in the right direction, but political interference can happen at any time,” he said.
Ma’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) faces stiff competition from the Democratic Progressive Party in November’s municipal elections.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS