Taiwan welcomes Chinese tourists -
carefully By Ting-I Tsai
TAIPEI - A long-time dream of Professor
Li, a Beijing-based academic, finally came true in
2004 when he visited Taiwan, after he had spent
years living in Japan and Korea and visited
numerous other countries around the world. In his
week-long trip, however, he was not allowed to
freely have a cup of tea or coffee with his
Taiwanese friends. "The way they treat us is just
like the North Koreans do," he complained.
Taiwan, which Beijing insists is part of
its territory, has become one of the most
attractive places on earth for Chinese tourists.
The attraction derives partly from the mystique
created by the long ban on travel between China
and Taiwan, as well as the somewhat misleading
images constructed by Beijing's historical
propaganda about Taiwan. A
manager from the Beijing-based China Travel
Service, Tuan Jidong, noted, "Taiwan represents an
ethnographical feeling to the majority of Chinese,
and lots of mainlanders feel regret for visiting
all of the provinces around China except Taiwan."
After years of silence on the travel ban
issue, Chen Yunlin, head of China's Taiwan Affairs
Office, recently announced the lifting of the
travel ban on Chinese tourists to Taiwan. At the
same time, China offered Taiwan a pair of pandas,
and allowed the import of six additional types of
fruit from Taiwan. The measures were represented
as "gifts" to former Kuomintang chairman Lien Chan
at the end of his historic China trip, and were
clearly made in hopes the offer would boost
support for Taiwan's China-friendly opposition
Kuomintang (KMT) and People First Party (PFP).
Investors took note of the potential that
Taiwan could benefit from wealthy Chinese
tourists, as Hong Kong has; the share prices of
companies in Taiwan's tourism sector increased
35.85% by the end of August, according to JF Asset
Management (Taiwan) Limited. As Taiwan now plans
to allow 1,000 Chinese tourists to enter its
territory every day, for a maximum 10-day trip,
365,000 Chinese are expected to visit Taiwan
annually once the ban is officially lifted in both
Taiwan and China. Based on the number of Chinese
tourists and assuming daily spending of US$80
each, Wang Chi-han, chairman of Taipei-based
Chang-han travel agency, suggested that lifting
the ban is likely to bring some NT$600 million
(US$18.1 million) annual revenues to Taiwan.
A hot competition among Taiwan's hotels,
meanwhile, is expected to begin next year, as 46
hotels, including 36 international tourist hotels,
are under construction or planning to expand. "I
think it would be great for the economy," said
Sean Chuang, president of Leofoo Development Co,
which owns the Westin Taipei and plans to
construct 17 hotels around Taiwan in the coming
years. Local travel agents also have not only
aggressively sought commercial partners in China
but also introduced numerous specialty trips for
Chinese tourists, which include a beauty tour that
involves facial surgery and spa treatments, as
well as a wedding-photo tour to well-known tourist
spots in Taiwan.
Although Taiwan's
government appears to be lukewarm to the
anticipated wave of mainland Chinese tourists,
thousands of enthusiastic Chinese travelers rushed
to local travel agents to register shortly after
Beijing's official announcement in May.
According to surveys, Chinese tourists are
particularly interested in visiting Taiwan's Ali
Mountain, which is located in the northeastern
part of Taiwan's southern Jiayi County; Sun Moon
Lake in central Taiwan; and Taiwan's National
Palace Museum; which preserves some 650,000
historical art pieces, including many of the
Chinese imperial collection from Beijing's
Forbidden City. Most of these artworks were
famously transported from the mainland to Taiwan
by the KMT army near the end of the Chinese civil
war.
"Taiwan is a good place. Taipei is so
progressive. In my mind, Taipei is a bit behind
Tokyo but ahead of Seoul," Li noted after his
visit.
In May, the China National Tourism
Administration announced further principles for
easing restrictions on tourist travel to Taiwan,
saying that any opening would be done under the
condition of signing bilateral agreements, and
listing travel agents on both sides entitled to
conduct the business. It also repeated Beijing's
insistence that talks on the issue be conducted
between "non-government" groups, a demand Taiwan
has so far refused and tried to challenge.
Suggesting both sides adopt the "Macau
model", used to reach an agreement on the 2005
Lunar New Year charter flights, Beijing's official
Xinhua news agency reported that China "hopes the
Taiwan authorities ... will quickly authorize
non-government tourism organizations on the island
to conduct consultations with the mainland side."
For Taiwan, however, forcing Beijing back to
official-level talks is a higher-priority issue
rather than opening the gate to Chinese tourists.
Joseph Wu, head of the Mainland Affairs
Council, said the opening to Chinese tourists is
much more complicated than charter flights, which
involved only aviation authorities. At the end of
July, he authorized the Travel Agents Association
of the Republic of China on Taiwan to assist the
government in arranging meetings and negotiations
with China, and MAC further emphasized in early
September that all issues "would be negotiated
with China by a negotiation team constituted by
the related governmental departments." To Taiwan,
issues demanding discussion include:
qualifications of the tourists, verification of
their identities, repatriation of overstayed
visitors, and regulations for travel agencies.
The concept of lifting the ban to allow
Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan was introduced in
Taiwan's cross-party Economic Development Advisory
Conference in August 2001. To implement the
conference's conclusion, Taiwan unilaterally eased
its own ban on Chinese tourists in 2002, but it
has accepted only those PRC passport-holders who
are already living or traveling overseas.
Furthermore, the authorities have introduced a
strict mechanism to prevent Chinese tourists from
going missing, although the scale of that problem
has not been large. As of May, some 54,000 Chinese
tourists had visited Taiwan since 2002, and some
70 had gone missing. By contrast, Taiwanese made
nearly 3.7 million trips to China in 2004,
according to figures from Beijing. Many of the
missing tourists were associated with specific
incidents. For example, in the summer of 2004, 17
Chinese tourists disappeared shortly after they
arrived at Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek International
Airport, and another 13 Chinese tourists went
missing shortly after they checked in at their
hotel.
Under Taiwan's mechanism of
conducting Chinese tourists, Taiwanese travel
agents who want to deal with Chinese tourists have
to have at least five years of experience, and
have to deposit NT$1 million with the travel
agency association to which they belong for
emergency use if the Chinese tourist absconds or
becomes involved in an accident in Taiwan.
Currently, 61 Taiwan travel agents are
entitled to conduct this business. Chinese
tourists have to prove that they have full-time
employment or own at least NT$200,000 in assets.
Such tourists will also only be allowed to enter
and leave Taiwan in tour groups of between 15 and
40 people, which must include a tour guide.
Permission to visit Taiwan will not be granted to
Chinese civil servants, military or political
officials, or Chinese citizens who have broken the
law within five years before their applications.
Chinese tourists attending a seven-day tour are
entitled to have one day of free time, while those
attending eight to ten-day tours are entitled to
one-and-a-half days of free time. But on such
days, the tourists are required to be back at
their hotels by 11pm.
The restrictions do
not end there. Travel agents managing Chinese
tourists are required to check and report on the
status of the tourists to the Tourism Bureau
within two hours of their arrival and departure in
Taiwan. In the event of overstays by their
clients, travel agents can be banned from bringing
more groups to Taiwan. The bans can last from
between one month to a year, depending on the
number of clients who overstay their visas.
Travel agents will have their quotas for
Chinese tourists reduced if too many overstay
their visas or disappear. Eric Chang, chairman of
Taiwan's China International Youth Travel Service,
noted that the mechanism is actually not fair to
travel agents, since it places responsibility on
local travel agents to verify Chinese tourists'
identifications. "If the government cannot do so,
how can we?" he noted, adding that it is unlikely
that many Chinese tourists would "escape", since
due to the net worth requirements, these tourists
are nominally far wealthier than the average
Taiwanese.
As of April, Beijing allowed
its citizens to visit 67 countries, and 36 million
Chinese are estimated to have traveled overseas
since China started to allow overseas travel in
1983. Taiwan, meanwhile, has not been listed as
one of the approved destinations, which would make
it illegal for Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan.
With economic growth in Taiwan slowing
since 2000, travel agents hope that Chinese
tourists can bring a flood of money to stimulate
Taiwan's economy. "Most of Taiwan's manufacturers
and high-tech companies have shifted to China.
What we can do now is actively promote the service
industry," said Wang Chi-han, chairman of the
Taipei-based Chang-han travel agency.
Ting-I Tsai is a Taipei-based
freelance writer.
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