President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday called China the “real barrier” to cross-strait exchanges and urged Beijing to hold talks with Taipei to ease tourism restrictions.
“The real barrier to cross-strait exchanges is actually China, not Taiwan,” Lai said, referring to Beijing’s restrictions on Chinese tourists visiting Taiwan, during a question-and-answer session at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday following his New Year’s Day address.
“If China is genuinely sincere, I suggest that the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association and the Association for Tourism Exchange across the Taiwan Straits begin negotiations” to ease those restrictions, Lai said.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei City Photojournalists’ Association
The associations were established by Taipei and Beijing respectively to facilitate coordination and negotiations on tourism.
The number of Taiwanese traveling to China for tourism or business was 2.05 million between January and November last year, while only 285,000 Chinese visited Taiwan during the same period, Lai said, citing government data.
The 2.05 million visitors were primarily individual travelers, as Taipei does not allow Taiwanese to travel to China in groups.
Lai criticized Beijing for barring Chinese students from pursuing degrees in Taiwan and for restricting tourism to Taiwan.
He made the comments after being asked about a pledge made by a Shanghai official during the Taipei-Shanghai Twin-City Forum last month that the Chinese city planned to allow its residents to travel to Taiwan.
Only residents from China’s Fujian Province are permitted to travel to Taiwan, but they are limited to Kinmen and Lienchiang counties.
As cross-strait relations remain strained and Beijing continues to refuse to engage in dialogue with the Democratic Progressive Party government, bilateral tourism has taken a hit.
During the news conference, which began with Lai’s New Year’s Day address that barely touched on cross-strait issues, the president also said it was “not worth it” for Taiwanese to apply for a Chinese identification card, which would lead to the revocation of their Taiwanese ID.
He was commenting on a video by a Taiwanese YouTuber who said that many Taiwanese had been encouraged to apply for Chinese ID cards, with about 100,000 having obtained the document.
The government would work to raise awareness of the issue to better prevent Taiwanese from being tempted by “short-term gains” and “going down the wrong path,” Lai said.
The Mainland Affairs Council has said it would look into the matter.
In Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a New Year’s speech said that “no one can stop” unification with Taiwan.
“The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification,” Xi said in a speech televised on China Central Television.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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