For a wide range of people who may once have felt a connection to the island, cross-Channel travel is no longer an option due to strained relations between the two countries. As a result, people-to-people contact has decreased, and many mainland Chinese youth who grew up on Taiwanese pop culture now find Taiwan feeling increasingly distant due to cross-Strait tensions, the pandemic, and stereotypes. He says it has become like that.
Tourists from the mainland need approval from both mainland and Taiwanese authorities to travel to the island. The Chinese government first allowed individual tourists from the mainland to travel to Taiwan in 2011, and as of 2015, before the policy changed, residents of 47 cities were allowed access to the island.
However, most third-tier cities, including Wang’s home province of Hunan, are not on the list. Wang had hoped that his city would be added to the list, making him eligible for a solo trip to Taiwan, but “that opportunity never came.”
The Chinese government considers the agreement to be the basis for all cross-strait communications and to suspend travel to the island by mainland tourists in 2019.. The situation was further exacerbated by the outbreak of Covid-19 in early 2020, with Taiwan suspending entry to all tourists and Beijing halting all group travel.
After the pandemic, the two countries reopened their borders, but most did not reopen to each other.
The Chinese government has also promised to allow Fujian residents to travel in groups when direct flights between Fujian’s Pingtan Island and Taiwan resume, but Taipei has said the offer is limited and not reciprocal. refused as such.
According to Taiwan’s Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Tsai, the scope of the proposal is “too narrow” and the government needs to discuss it further.
Taipei had planned to allow group travel to mainland China, but it was shelved in February after the Chinese government adjusted civil aviation flight paths near the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait and failed to make reciprocal offers. became.
The Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office told the Democratic Progressive Party on Wednesday in response to “strong requests from the peoples of both sides to normalize cross-strait people-to-people exchanges” and “lift unreasonable restrictions and bans as soon as possible.” I asked.
The agency accused Taiwan’s ruling party of ignoring its calls and “blindly slandering and attacking the mainland” for political gain.
01:29
Chinese tourists stranded in mountains during Golden Week
Chinese tourists stranded in mountains during Golden Week
Wang Yingjin, director of the Center for Cross-Strait Relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said the reopening of the mainland and growing expectations for cross-Strait exchanges “show kindness.”
He said further action would depend on Rai’s inaugural address.
He said, “If he speaks of “Taiwan independence” in his May 20 speech, it will certainly have an impact on the mainland’s attitude toward resuming cross-strait private travel.”
The Chinese government claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to reunify it. Most countries, including the United States, do not recognize the island as an independent state, but oppose changing the status quo by force.
Ho Chi-yong, a professor of general education at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, south of Taipei, said Lai would remain “low profile” at the inauguration because the Democratic Progressive Party does not have a majority in parliament.
He said the new administration would be the right time to reinstate previous travel rules as a step to prevent a “downward spiral” in cross-strait relations.
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‘We must become stronger’: Hualien residents flock to night market after major earthquake
‘We must become stronger’: Hualien residents flock to night market after major earthquake
But Mr Ho said there were also issues that needed to be addressed when cross-Channel travel resumed, including inconvenience to local residents and the monopoly of travel companies.
Wang, from Renmin University, said that the decline in people-to-people exchanges and economic ties in recent years has pushed peoples from both sides further apart. “People’s favorability toward Taiwanese people has declined,” he added. ‘ declined.
He said cross-strait exchanges would resume in stages, but “will hardly reach the scale and level of exchanges during the Ma Ying-jeou administration,” quoting the island’s former president. .
Echo Li, a Beijing-based magazine editor, was one of the hundreds of thousands of tourists from the mainland who took advantage of the short-lived policy.
The 27-year-old said, “I felt very lucky to have taken the last chance before the pandemic to travel to Taiwan.”
Since the suspension of cross-strait tourism, “there has probably been a sense of distance with Taiwan,” Li said, adding that since the pandemic, that sense of distance has been “not just with Taiwan but with the world.”
Even before the pandemic, an affinity for Taiwanese entertainment didn’t necessarily translate into a desire to travel to Taiwan.
Molly Wang, a graduate student from mainland China, noticed this reluctance when she was invited to travel to Taiwan with a friend while studying abroad in 2018.
Although she liked Taiwanese romance dramas and thought Taiwan was a romantic place, she also had misgivings.
“I was actually a little worried because I heard that there were a lot of pro-Taiwan independence forces and it looked scary… [the locals] If they heard my mainland accent, they might treat me badly,” she said.
“but [locals] In fact, they were very friendly to me… and I also saw pro-independence flags and Falun Gong, but they did not harm me,” the 24-year-old said.
Her journey took her along the southwest coast of the island, from Kaohsiung to the southern tip of Kenting. Although she remembered the beach as “very beautiful,” she might not have been willing to travel today if she hadn’t experienced it first hand. .
Wang, who is from Jiangxi province, said her friends, especially those who grew up in inland China like her, rarely include Taiwan on their travel destinations because they are unfamiliar with Taiwanese culture. Told.
“They felt they needed to be extra prepared and they had to be careful with their words and actions,” she says.
