The Tourism Bureau yesterday rejected a demand from a Chinese travel agency to ban videos with anti-Communist content on tour buses transporting Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan.
Any videos can be shown on tour buses as long as they have legal copyright and their content does not violate “good morals,” the bureau said.
It does not matter if the videos involve anti-Communist content, it added.
The issue came to the fore after the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) yesterday published a story about a Chinese tour group visiting Taiwan last month being shown a Britishproduced documentary about former Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) while on a tour bus.
It is customary in Taiwan for tour bus drivers to show movies during trips.
According to an investigation by the Tourism Bureau, only one elderly member of the group was dissatisfied with the video, complaining that the representation of Mao in the documentary was different from what he believed it to be.
The Taiwanese guide consulted the other tour group members and was told that they wanted to continue watching the video.
After receiving the tourist’s complaint, the Chinese travel agency organizing the tour demanded that the Taiwanese travel agency stop showing anti-Communist documentaries on tour buses carrying Chinese tourists, the Liberty Times reported, adding that it also demanded that Taiwanese guides refrain from expressing points of view different from their Chinese clients.
The Tourism Bureau said it would ask Chinese tourism authorities to look into the incident and respect the pluralism and freedom of speech in Taiwan.
“Taiwan is a free and democratic society, and as long as the rights of others are not infringed upon, Chinese tourists should not only abide by Taiwan’s laws, but should also respect different opinions and ideologies,” the bureau said.
According to Tourism Bureau statistics, nearly 4 million Chinese visited Taiwan last year, by far the largest group among the nation’s 9 million visitors last year.
LONG FLIGHT: The jets would be flown by US pilots, with Taiwanese copilots in the two-seat F-16D variant to help familiarize them with the aircraft, the source said The US is expected to fly 10 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 70/72 jets to Taiwan over the coming months to fulfill a long-awaited order of 66 aircraft, a defense official said yesterday. Word that the first batch of the jets would be delivered soon was welcome news to Taiwan, which has become concerned about delays in the delivery of US arms amid rising military tensions with China. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the initial tranche of the nation’s F-16s are rolling off assembly lines in the US and would be flown under their own power to Taiwan by way
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
OBJECTS AT SEA: Satellites with synthetic-aperture radar could aid in the detection of small Chinese boats attempting to illegally enter Taiwan, the space agency head said Taiwan aims to send the nation’s first low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite into space in 2027, while the first Formosat-8 and Formosat-9 spacecraft are to be launched in October and 2028 respectively, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council laid out its space development plan in a report reviewed by members of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee. Six LEO satellites would be produced in the initial phase, with the first one, the B5G-1A, scheduled to be launched in 2027, the council said in the report. Regarding the second satellite, the B5G-1B, the government plans to work with private contractors
RSS