Against the background of tense relations, China has tightened the rules for travel to Taiwan. Chinese citizens from 47 cities are therefore no longer allowed to travel to Taiwan on their own.
A pilot project that has allowed Chinese travelers to travel since 2011 will be suspended on August 1, the Beijing Ministry of Culture and Tourism said today. For now, Chinese people can only visit Taiwan in organized group tours.
The communist leadership in Beijing has always regarded the democratic island republic as a separate territory. Most recently, Beijing had responded angrily to a US armaments business that wants to sell weapons to Taiwan for about $ 2 billion (about € 1.7 billion).
Taiwan refers to tourism pact
Taiwan’s government condemned the Chinese ban. The tourist activities would be carried out on the basis of a tourism package agreed by both sides. China ended the agreement without prior consultation.
According to Taiwan’s official tourism bureau, 1.67 million Chinese tourists, including groups and individuals, traveled to Taiwan in the first half of this year. That’s an increase of 30 percent over the same period of 2018.
The local tourism industry predicted that about 150,000 Chinese tourists traveled to Taiwan each month, Taiwanese news agency CNA reported.
Relations between the two countries have deteriorated significantly since Taiwan’s Progress Party DPP won the elections three years ago and Tsai Ing-Wen has been named the new president. Since then, unlike the previous Kuomintang government, the government in Taiwan is increasingly distancing itself from Beijing.
