While the government is drafting plans to allow all Taiwanese to travel to China via the “small three links,” it has yet to decide when the policy will take effect, Executive Yuan Spokeswoman Vanessa Shih (史亞平) said yesterday.
Shih made the remarks to correct media reports that said Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) had said on the legislative floor on Friday that the government would implement the expansion of the scope of the “small three links” within two weeks.
The “small three links,” which opened in January 2001, allows limited direct transportation between Kinmen and Matsu islands and the southern Chinese port cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou.
The scheme provides a faster and cheaper way to travel to China as people in Taiwan proper must make stopovers in third territories such as Hong Kong and Macau before traveling on to China.
The route is only available for people with addresses registered in Kinmen and Matsu for at least six months, businesspeople with operations in China and their employees and family members, veterans originally from China, and residents of Fujian Province married to Taiwanese.
Shih said yesterday that Liu had instructed the Mainland Affairs Council to conduct a review of the “small three links” and draw up a proposal to liberalize related regulations in the shortest period of time.
The restrictions on travelers via the “small three links” will almost certainly be lifted in the near future, as they would become meaningless once regular cross-strait passenger charter flights commence, she added.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS