Cross-Straits visitors to top 13 m in 2016

TAIPEI - A mainland official forecast on Monday that tourists travelling across the Taiwan Straits would reach 13 million in 2016 and 20 million by 2020.

Shao Qiwei, president of the Beijing-based Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits, gave the figures while meeting Wu Po-hsiung, honorary chairman of the Kuomintang Party.

Shao said that the prospect for cross-Straits tourism is promising thanks to the existing cooperation and working mechanism between the mainland and the island.

More than 1.3 million mainland tourists visited Taiwan during the first half of 2012, up 50.7 percent year on year, said Shao.

Shao is scheduled to attend a new round of cross-Straits tourism talks in southern Taiwan's Kaohsiung.