Mainland criticizes DPP for blocking tourism recovery efforts

A Chinese mainland spokesman on Wednesday criticized Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authorities for rejecting site-inspection requests from mainland tourism operators, saying the move had cut off a pathway to the recovery of the island's tourism market.

Chen Binhua, spokesman for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said the rejection was a typical case of political manipulation and a deliberate attempt to create obstacles by the DPP authorities.

As part of the 10 policy measures announced by the mainland on April 12 to promote cross-Strait exchange and cooperation, the mainland will resume pilot programs allowing residents of Fujian province and Shanghai to travel individually to Taiwan. To implement the measures, tourism industry operators from Fujian and Shanghai recently submitted applications for group inspection tours to Taiwan to assess travel routes and coordinate with tourism operators on the island.

Chen described it as a goodwill initiative by the mainland that responded to the shared expectations of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, promoting cross-Strait exchanges and helping Taiwan's tourism industry. Noting that site inspections are a routine industry practice, Chen criticized the DPP authorities for imposing a precondition requiring consultations first to be held between the Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits on the mainland and the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association on the island.

The cross-Strait agreement on mainland residents traveling to Taiwan for tourism was negotiated and signed by the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation on the basis of the 1992 Consensus, which embodies the one-China principle. Chen said the DPP authorities have refused to acknowledge the 1992 Consensus, and their tourism department even asserted that "Taiwan and China engage in bilateral negotiations through the two tourism associations".

He dismissed the rhetoric and said it fully exposed the DPP's underlying agenda to reject the 1992 Consensus, disrupt cross-Strait exchanges, and advance "Taiwan independence" separatism. He accused the DPP authorities of artificially cutting off channels for the recovery of the tourism market and rejecting travel by mainland residents to the island on various untenable grounds.

"The DPP authorities are acting against the tide, ignoring the difficult situation facing Taiwan's tourism industry and livelihood concerns of ordinary people," he said. Chen said the authorities are sacrificing the concrete interests of the people in Taiwan in pursuit of political self-interest, which has increasingly provoked strong anger among tourism industry operators and the public on the island.