Both Taiwan and China are sincere in working out the details for a special charter-flight service prior to the Lunar New Year celebration, but the government has not yet received a response from its negotiator, a government official said yesterday.
Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), dismissed a media report that Taiwan and China have reached agreement on the arrangement for Taiwanese working in China who wish to spend the lunar new year holidays early next month at home by taking charter flights.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will also organize a mission to Beijing to help with the issue due to the sensitive cross-strait situation.
The KMT delegation is slated to depart for Beijing as scheduled today to hold talks tomorrow with officials of the Taiwan Affairs Office under the State Council and the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). According to Chiu, the MAC has not received any information from Lo Ta-hsing (樂大信), chairman of the Taipei Airlines Association, who was commissioned by the MAC to hold technical talks with representatives of the CAAC in Macau Friday.
Regarding the media report that Taiwan and China have reached agreement in Macau on a model for "non-stop, round-trip, multi-destination flights by carriers on both sides," said Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭), spokesman for the KMT. The delegation will be headed by Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), director of the KMT's Central Policy Committee, and will include KMT lawmakers John Chang and Chu Fong-chih (朱鳳芝), and People First Party lawmaker Li Hong-jyun (李鴻鈞).
The special Lunar New Year charter flights were first launched in 2003, involving only Taiwanese carriers. But the service failed to proceed last year as a result of China's insistence on its carriers being allowed to offer flights.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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