Shanghai Vice Mayor Says He Will Promote Tour Groups From Shanghai Coming to Tai

TaiwanPlus News

Shanghai’s vice mayor says he’ll push for tour groups from his city to visit Taiwan. The announcement, made during an annual goodwill forum between Taipei and Shanghai, has some in Taiwan's tourism industry excited.

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00:00Speaking at this year's Taipei-Shanghai Twin Cities Forum,

00:04Shanghai's vice mayor said he hoped more Shanghai residents would visit Taipei.

00:08Shanghai will actively promote the tourists from Shanghai to Taiwan.

00:15Tourist routes will include Taipei City.

00:19Citing worsening relations, Beijing stopped issuing its tourists permits to visit Taiwan in 2019.

00:26Soon after, pandemic-era travel restrictions were imposed and cross-strait tourism ground to a halt.

00:32And as of 2024, Chinese tourists from just one province are allowed to visit two of Taiwan's

00:37outlying islands, Jinmen and Matsu, a move seen as an olive branch from China amid increasingly

00:42tense cross-strait relations. Taiwan, meanwhile, has allowed individual tourism to China, but not

00:49group tours, a policy that's led to a tit-for-tat with China's Taiwan Affairs Office saying it might

00:54consider lifting its ban on tourists to Taiwan if Taipei allows groups to visit China.

01:00The ongoing deadlock and resulting drop in tourism has hit some local economies hard,

01:04with many in the industry happy to see any thaw in relations.

01:24It's still not clear if tourism from Shanghai will materialize, and even if it does, it won't

01:36bring Chinese tourism to popular sites like Taipei 101 behind me back up to pre-pandemic numbers.

01:41But still, some in Taiwan are saying the announcement may be a move in the right direction,

01:46a positive step in cross-strait relations.

01:49James Lin, Alex Chen, and Keynes Coranta for Taiwan Plus.

01:54you

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