The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday welcomed an announcement by Chinese authorities on their plan to resume group travel to Taiwan for residents of Shanghai and its Fujian Province.
“The [Taiwanese] government welcomes Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan,” the MAC said in a statement.
“However, the specifics of implementation are still pending the Chinese authorities’ announcement of specific measures,” the council said.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
The MAC also urged Chinese authorities to open communications on issues related to tourism safety, quality control and stability with Taiwan through the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association (TSTA) and the Association For Tourism Exchange Across The Taiwan Straits (ATETS).
“This will help ensure the smooth resumption of tourism exchanges in the future,” the council said.
The TSTA and ATETS were established by Taipei and Beijing respectively to facilitate coordination and negotiations between the two sides on tourism.
The MAC’s statement came in response to an announcement made by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism early yesterday, in which it said China’s government would “soon resume group travel to Taiwan for residents of Fujian Province and Shanghai.”
The purpose of the resumption is to “further promote the normalization of interactions between individuals across the Taiwan Strait and the regularization of [cross-strait] exchanges in various fields,” the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism said.
It was also aimed at responding to the “strong expectations” of grassroots communities and the tourism industry in Taiwan, it said.
The Chinese ministry said it hopes the tourism sectors on both sides would strengthen communication and coordination to provide high-quality services and products for Chinese residents visiting Taiwan as part of group tours, it added without elaborating about what communication it foresaw.
China only allows Fujian residents to visit Kinmen and Lienchiang counties, but not other cities or counties in Taiwan proper.
Taipei last year raised its travel warning for China to “orange,” advising Taiwanese against nonessential trips, following a threat for Beijing to execute “diehard” Taiwan independence supporters.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office yesterday said that Taipei should cancel the travel warning and fully resume all direct travel links across the Taiwan Strait.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
RSS