China Proposes Business, Travel Links to Taiwan
China Proposes Business, Travel Links to Taiwan
China suggested new economic and travel links with Taiwan on Friday designed to benefit the island’s high-tech businessmen, its produce farmers and many families with loved ones on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
The proposals, announced by the government’s Taiwan Affairs Office, marked the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures from Beijing and Taipei aimed at relaxing tensions across the strait despite fundamental discord between the two governments over Taiwan’s status.
“We will try our best to do everything that is good for our compatriots in Taiwan,” Li Weiyi, the Taiwan Affairs Office chief spokesman, said at news conference in Beijing.
Li said China was prepared to start talks about scheduling more direct charter flights between mainland cities and Taiwan. Ordinarily, travelers between China and Taiwan must pass through Hong Kong or Macau, turning a voyage of several hours into an all-day affair.
The new flights, Li said, should follow the example of charters arranged for Taiwanese residents of China who made family visits for the Chinese New Year festivities that ended Wednesday.
More than 10,700 people took the direct flights, half from Taiwan to the mainland and half in the other direction, according to Tang Yi, who heads the economic bureau of the Taiwan Affairs Office.
