Taiwan

Taiwan officials in mainland to woo tourists

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-06-12 07:52

XIAMEN, Fujian - Wearing traditional costumes of Taiwan's aboriginal Atayal ethnic minority, Tsai Ping-kun is introducing specialty products and tourist sites at a promotion conference in China's southeastern coastal city of Xiamen.

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Rather an aboriginal, Tsai is the vice mayor of Taichung City in west-central Taiwan, the island's third-largest city.

Tsai is in Xiamen with another two county officials from Taiwan to advocate local tourism and specialty products to Chinese mainlanders at the third cross-Strait forum held in nine major cities in Fujian province.

"We are going to launch a travel route to cover all important tourist sites in the region so that travelers from the mainland will be able to better enjoy the sceneries of Taiwan," Tsai said at the conference.

"We shall also make preferential policies to offer 50 percent discount for the first 1,000 free-drive travelers from the mainland," he added.

Other stimulation measures include the launch of a special traffic card, with which passengers will enjoy free drive within 8 kilometers.

China's mainland and Taiwan have seen booming tourism after authorities lifted the ban on mass mainland tourists to Taiwan in July 2008.

Mainland tourist arrivals to Taiwan reached 930,000 in 2009 and shot up about 127 percent to 1.63 million in 2010, statistics from the tourism authorities in Taiwan show.

Fan Liqing, spokeswoman for the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a press conference on May 25 that the mainland and Taiwan are talking over allowing individuals from the mainland to travel to the island before the end of June.

Tsai is jumping onto the potential opportunities in the tourism sector to bring more revenues to his city.

Like Tsai, Taiwan's Taoyuan County Magistrate Wu Chih-Yang and his wife are too advocating specialty products and tourism of their county at the promotion conference.

Wu is the eldest son of Kuomintang (KMT) honorary chairman Wu Po-hsiung. It is his first participation in the cross-Strait forum.

"It is very good that the forum is based on civilian exchanges, " the 42-year-old official told Xinhua in an interview.

"The exchanges should be natural, free of compulsivity and restriction. Communication at the levels of grassroots will help facilitate the making of policies and measures that will benefit both sides of the Strait," Wu said.

"I hope that the forum will be held in Taiwan someday, and Taoyuan will be very glad to be the host," Wu said.

In order to ensure broad representation for the forum, the closing ceremony will be held next Friday in Taiwan's city of Taichung, the island's third largest city, forum organizers say.