While government officials called the agreement signed between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) on Nov. 4 as “a big step forward” in cross-strait trade relations, industry representatives said the results were not quite what they had expected.
Taiwan appeared to benefit in terms of cross-strait sea transport in the recent SEF-ARATS talks, they said. Once the agreement takes effect, vessels from Taiwan will be allowed to navigate directly to 63 Chinese sea and river ports.
Companies will also be exempt from paying business and income tax revenue derived from direct cross-strait shipping.
Under the terms of the agreement, vessels registered to shipping companies in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China can engage in direct cross-strait transport of passengers or cargo.
Flag-of-convenience (FOC) vessels, or those registered in another country, will also be allowed to participate in the direct shipping service, but will be restricted to those companies already engaged in offshore shipping center transport, cross-strait third-territory container line transport and the transportation of sand and gravel. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) said that the nation had 477 registered FOCs. The agreement only applies to 16 of them, or about 3 percent.
Meanwhile, qualifications outlined in the agreement essentially ruled out the nation’s bulk shipping carriers and FOCs operating with other countries. Some have even speculated that the measure is meant to encourage more shipping firms in Taiwan to switch their registrations to Hong Kong instead.
The government also sees the plans to increase cross-strait chartered flights as a breakthrough. The number of chartered flights will be increased from 36 per week to 108 per week, with each country allowed 54 flights. Services will also no longer be restricted to weekends.
But Tony Su (蘇宏義), chairman of the Taipei Airliners Association, said before the SEF-ARATS talks that the nation needed at least 84 weekly cross-strait charter flights if it aimed to have 3,000 Chinese tourists visit daily.
And though China now has 21 airports available for cross-strait charter flights service, Taiwan’s carriers are only planning to fly a few profitable routes — such as flights to Shanghai, which are capped at 20 per week.
The talks between SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) also made it possible for both countries to launch anticipated chartered cargo flight services, starting with 60 flights per month.
However, what most of the nation’s carriers really wanted was to allow the passenger jets to carry freight, which is seen as a lucrative service. So far, both Taiwan and China have only agreed that passenger jets can carry airmail and packages sent by Chinese and Taiwanese postal services.
Representatives from the transportation and travel industries generally see resuming a dialogue between the two sides of the Strait as a positive development, though they do not necessarily agree with every detail of the negotiations.
China now “has all the bargaining chips,” they say. Whether it is about limitations on flights to big cities like Shanghai, the number of Chinese provinces from which residents are allowed to visit Taiwan, or the number of travel agencies authorized to organize group tours to Taiwan, they say China is in charge.
But they also have doubts about the ability of Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) officials to accurately represent them in the negotiations and defend their interests when discussing technical transportation issues.
Yao Ta-kuang (姚大光), chairman of the Travel Agent Association suggested that MAC officials could have used more leverage in the negotiations.
“Taiwan has allowed approximately 5 million Taiwanese to visit China since it lifted the restrictions two decades ago,” he said. “With the number of cross-strait charter flights that are currently available [36 flights], Chinese tourists who are able to come are only one-tenth the number of Taiwanese going to China. There’s no comparison.”
One travel service operator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the delegates from Taiwan as a “loosely formed team” and said they were dealing with experienced Chinese negotiators who participated in the first SEF-ARATS talk in 1993 in Singapore and subsequent talks in Shanghai in 1998.
Industry representatives were also upset at what they called the failure to include certain details in the cross-strait agreement.
Despite the downsides, MOTC officials said the agreement had drawn the attention of international sea liners and some have expressed an interest in registering their ships in Taiwan and setting up branches here.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its