Taiwan and China will start direct air and shipping services today, formally ending a nearly six-decade ban on regular links.
Prominent politicians will attend inauguration ceremonies in Taiwan and China today to mark the opening.
The first Taiwanese ships, from Evergreen and Yang Ming Marine, are scheduled to leave from Kaohsiung and Keelung for Chinese ports at about noon.
Ships with the Chinese companies China Shipping and China Ocean Shipping are to sail vessels to Taiwan from Shanghai and Tianjin respectively.
Also today, up to 60 cargo flights per month will start to fly between Taiwan and China in accordance with an agreement signed on Nov. 4 between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
Daily passenger flights will also start, with 16 scheduled for today, in an expansion of weekend charter services that began in July.
The direct services will help companies cut costs and will create new businesses as both Taiwan and China are feeling the pinch of the global economic slowdown, SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said.
“This will contribute greatly to our economic development,” said Chiang, who signed the air and shipping pacts with ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林).
With annual bilateral trade at about US$100 billion, many businesses have pushed for years to end the ban on direct links.
In the past, cross-strait flights had to fly through Hong Kong airspace, while cargo ships had to stop at Okinawa.
Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), a political science professor at Soochow University, said that direct transportation links would mark the beginning of more frequent cross-strait civic and business exchanges as the cost of transportation and traveling time would be reduced.
“Hostilities between the two sides will also be tempered,” he said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications estimated that local airlines and passengers would save around NT$3 billion (US$89.8 million) a year, while shipping companies would save around half that.
George Tsai (蔡瑋), a political science professor at Chinese Culture University in Taipei, said the direct links would “kick-start” the process of a full normalization of relations with China.
“Once closer links are in place, they could hardly be stopped or retracted, no matter who becomes the next president,” Tsai said.
“And once that happens, Taiwan will not be able to get out of [the] framework of ‘One China,’” Tsai said, referring to Beijing’s policy toward Taiwan.
When Chen visited Taiwan last month to sign the agreements on transport links, massive protests dogged his trip.
Violent clashes between police and protesters injured more than 110 people.
“The direct flights certainly have political implications,” Lo said.
“Songshan Airport is for domestic flights and no foreign airlines are allowed to use it. Then why has the government opened it to Chinese air carriers? To Beijing, the direct flights are domestic routes,” Lo said.
Lo rejected the government’s claim that Taiwan had more to gain economically from the flights, saying Beijing would benefit more.
“While the flights take more Taiwan tourists and investors to China, the number of Chinese tourists traveling to Taiwan is much lower than the targeted 3,000 per day,” he said.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
RSS