The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China.
The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo.
Photo: Taipei Times file photo
The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development and cooperation, she said.
The MAC said China’s 22 guidelines targeting Taiwanese who do not support Beijing’s efforts to take over the nation make China unsafe to visit.
Beijing on June 21 last year unveiled the 22 guidelines authorizing its courts to try “Taiwanese independence separatists” in absentia, with sentences including the death penalty.
The MAC said it rejected the expo organizer’s application for Chinese nationals’ participation for failing to demonstrate an essential purpose or guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect.
The MAC said it in February asked Beijing to resume tourism talks via appropriate channels, but its calls fell on deaf ears.
China should do more to ensure healthy exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, it said.
Separately, the Tourism Administration said that China is not a safe place for Taiwanese to visit.
The Chinese delegation had 300 officials, including the deputy heads of principal culture and tourism departments, a tourism industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity said.
Taiwan’s refusal of Chinese officials’ attendance to an event as “soft” as a tourism expo is a sign of deteriorating relations between the two sides, they said.
The expo, first held in 2018, is no stranger to difficulties, but issues had always been solved, Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association chairwoman Janice Lai (賴瑟珍) said.
Chinese officials were unusually enthusiastic about attending the expo this year, she said, adding that the exclusion of the Chinese delegation is a source of “deep regret and frustration” for the association.
Additional reporting by CNA
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