The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday confirmed that it had received a letter from China regarding resuming cross-strait flights from five Chinese airports, and said it would carefully evaluate the proposal.
The letter was received on Tuesday last week, when Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) was in China, MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said.
Beijing urged the restoration of direct flight services to Urumqi, Xian, Harbin, Kunming and Lanzhou, he said, adding that the request later appeared as one of the 10 “incentive measures” that China said would benefit Taiwan.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
While the council would assess the proposal, airlines are not particularly interested in operating flights to any of the five destinations, Liang said.
“Airlines are concerned about whether the return flight would still have passengers after they take Taiwanese travelers there. China does not allow residents in any of those five cities to visit Taiwan, meaning that aircraft would return with no passengers on board,” Liang added.
Airlines are unlikely to expand destinations unless a certain percentage of seats on return flights would be filled, he said.
Those destinations are mostly accessed by tourists who do not necessarily need direct flights to get there, he added.
EVA Air, Starlux Airlines and China Airlines offer flights to only nine major airports in Europe, he said, adding that people have no trouble transferring to other flights if they wish to visit other cities.
A direct flight ticket from Taipei to Xian costs about NT$15,000 to NT$20,000, while one to Xian via Shanghai costs NT$8,000 to NT$12,000, Liang said.
Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said the government has always welcomed healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said that demand for cross-strait direct flights is not as high as expected.
Agencies would conduct a pragmatic assessment after reviewing the official request, she added.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) said that 10 cross-strait direct flight routes have a weekly capacity of 420 flights, but only 310 fly per week.
Meanwhile, China’s new policy regarding Taiwan’s distant-water fishing vessels is as another example of Beijing’s tactic of first imposing barriers and then offering concessions, similar to its approach toward Taiwanese agricultural and fishery products, Liang said.
Taiwanese fishing vessels were previously allowed to call at designated Chinese ports to unload catches. However, Chinese authorities in 2021 introduced additional registration requirements.
Many Taiwanese vessels applied repeatedly, but were rejected for unclear reasons, effectively preventing them from unloading at Chinese ports, Liang said.
As a result, vessels had to return to Taiwan to offload, process and freeze their catch before exporting it to China, he said.
The new “preferential policy” largely amounts to a relaxation of those restrictions, rather than substantive new policies, he said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
TRADE-OFF: Beijing seeks to trade a bowl of tempura for a Chinese delicacy, an official said, while another said its promises were attempts to interfere in the polls The government must carefully consider the national security implications of building a bridge connecting Kinmen County and Xiamen, China, the Public Construction Commission (PCC) said yesterday. PCC Commissioner Derek Chen (陳金德), who is also a minister without portfolio, made the remarks in a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, after Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Fu-kuei (徐富癸) asked about China’s proposal of new infrastructure projects to further connect Kinmen and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties with Xiamen. China unveiled the bridge plan, along with nine other policies for Taiwan, on Sunday, the last day of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) visit
RSS