Mainland visitors ‘could return soon’ to parts of Taiwan
Mainland tourists may start visiting parts of Taiwan again as early as next month after a three-year freeze, according to an opposition lawmaker whose constituency sits on a group of islands off the coast of the mainland.
Travellers from the province of Fujian would be allowed to reach the nearby outlying Taiwan-controlled islets of Penghu, Matsu and Quemoy, which is also known as Kinmen, Taiwanese legislator Chen Yu-jen told the Post.
Chen has asked Taiwan authorities to move forward with lifting a ban on mainland travellers that has been in place since early 2020. “The help from those tourists would be huge,” said Chen, who represents Quemoy in the Taiwanese parliament for the opposition Kuomintang.
“The restaurants, the guest houses, everyone has been missing these tourists for several years.”
Mainland officials barred its citizens from independent travel to Taiwan in 2019, citing the state of overall bilateral relations, although group tours were still permitted.
In 2020, Taiwan halted all inbound tourism as part of its coronavirus prevention measures before reopening its borders in October, although it continues to ban mainland travellers.
Last week, the government’s Mainland Affairs Council in Taipei said any resumption would first require “communication” and “planning”.
“The partial and potentially further resumption of tourism could serve as an initial step towards rebuilding trust and fostering understanding between people across the strait,” said Wang Wei-chieh, a Taiwan-based foreign affairs analyst.
But Beijing had not placed Quemoy, Matsu and Penghu on its “list of offshore travel destinations”, the Mainland Affairs Council told the Post.
“Our council will pay close attention to related developments and include that in our assessment,” the statement added.
Ferries from the mainland to Quemoy and Matsu, which opened in 2001 – seven years before all of Taiwan allowed mainland travellers – handled 248 million person-trips in 2018.
Before the ban in 2020, mainland tourists would charter buses to visit Quemoy’s historic courtyard houses and military relics dating back to the 1950s.
Penghu, a 64-islet windswept archipelago also known as Pescadores that is famous for its beaches, lies further from the mainland, and is not linked to Fujian province by a direct ferry.
The three outlying island groups, with a total population of around 350,000, were popular with Taiwanese tourists on weekends, but businesses would welcome mainland visitors on weekdays, said Bian Chieh-min, general manager of Phoenix Tours in Taipei.
“We’re open now to everyone else except mainland tourists – only the mainland is still outstanding – so operators in the travel business are holding out hope,” Bian said.
Quemoy lawmaker Chen regularly visits Fujian, which is just a 20-minute ferry ride from Kinmen, for talks with mainland officials. “They want more dialogue with Taiwan and more of an opening,” she said.
The mainland will probably, according to Chen, approach Taiwan about allowing Quemoy’s fishing boats to sell their catch in the mainland city of Xiamen.
Local fishing enterprises were “numerous” and keen on the idea, she said.
Chen is also pushing for up to 1,000 mainland undergraduates to attend National Quemoy University, a science and engineering specialised campus of 3,700 students, and to let mainland visitors use the “high-quality” medical services.
“We hope ties with mainland China will be increasingly close,” Chen added.