The ROC government is considering a plan that will allow residents from more mainland Chinese cities to visit Taiwan, Tourism Bureau Director-General Janice Seh-jen Lai said Jan. 17.
“We expect that residents from a wider range of mainland Chinese cities will soon be able to make independent visits to Taiwan,” Lai said in the mainland Chinese city of Nanjing while promoting Taiwan’s upcoming lantern festival.
Under current regulations, only residents of Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen are eligible for individual travel in Taiwan. Up to 500 individual mainland Chinese tourists are allowed to enter the nation per day, with each of them allowed to stay for up to 15 days.
“Our potential candidates will possibly include not only residents in coastal cities, but also those in inland ones,” the director-general said.
Details of the plan are still being worked out and will depend on negotiations between the Taipei-based Taiwan Strait Tourism Association and its Beijing counterpart, the Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association, she said, noting the new regulation is expected to take effect in the first half of 2012 at the soonest.
Since June 22, 2011, when Taiwan first allowed solo travelers from mainland China to visit, some 32,170 of them have made the journey, according to bureau statistics.
In related news, the TSTA is planning to open a tourism office in Shanghai, following the inauguration of its Beijing branch in May 2011.
According to Lai, since roughly 40 percent of mainland Chinese visitors to Taiwan come from the greater Shanghai area, a local TSTA representative office can better serve travelers’ needs.(HZW)
