The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) says its plan to limit the number of Taiwanese group tourists traveling to China to 2,000 per day remains in place. The MAC is the Cabinet agency responsible for cross-strait relations.
The comments from the MAC minister came in response to an announcement by the Transportation Ministry that the ban on group tours to China would be lifted in March 2024. MAC Deputy Minister Jan Jyh-horng (詹志宏) recently stated that the Transportation Ministry has not finalized a decision yet, and the March timeline is merely a statement of the ministry’s planning direction.
MAC Minister Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) was asked to clarify the issue while speaking in the Legislature on Monday. Chiu says that the decision was based primarily on concerns about reciprocity. Chiu says that cross-strait tourism exchanges should be reciprocal and mutually beneficial. For example, he says that in 2015, 4 million Chinese tourists visited Taiwan, but that number dropped to 1.8 million in 2019, after China imposed restrictions on tourists traveling to Taiwan.
Another concern, Chiu says, is avoiding an imbalance in cross-strait tourism. He says that Taiwan's tourism sector could be adversely affected if China does not reciprocate Taiwan's opening of group travel. He says that is why the daily limit of 2,000 people has been set.
Chiu says the daily limit is a way to manage risk in the face of uncertainty regarding China's willingness to reciprocate Taiwan’s policies on cross-strait travel.
