A delegation from Taiwan’s outlying Kinmen Islands is pushing for China to reopen tourism links. China placed restrictions on its citizens visiting Taiwan during the COVID pandemic, and those bans have persisted amid poor cross-strait relations.
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00:00A Taiwanese delegation is heading to China to try to push for the reopening of tourism
00:05links. The delegation is from Taiwan's outlying islands of Jinmen, which are just a few kilometers
00:10off the Chinese coast. Louise Watt is following the story for us from Taipei. Louise, why
00:17is Jinmen sending this delegation now?
00:21Jinmen is close to the Chinese coast and it's particularly dependent on China for trade.
00:29And after more than three years of no Chinese tourists, they want them back. Now a delegation
00:36headed by officials from Jinmen's local government, with a whole load of representatives from
00:42tourism in tow, they're heading to Beijing. And tomorrow, they're expected to arrive this
00:48afternoon, but tomorrow that's when the meeting takes place. They're expected to meet with
00:54the head of the Chinese government agency that's in charge with relations with Taiwan.
01:01Now China stopped its citizens making tour groups, making visits as part of tour groups
01:08to Taiwan in 2020. Those restrictions are still largely in place. And the delegation
01:14says it wants to press Beijing to allow Chinese tourists to come back to Jinmen as soon as
01:21possible. And Jinmen's legislator, Chen Yujian, she's also part of this delegation. She says
01:30that she hopes that Chinese tour groups will be allowed back to Jinmen before China's big
01:37holiday, the National Day holiday in October. That's when millions of Chinese travel. Chen,
01:45she is the legislator of the main, she belongs to the main opposition party, the KMT. And
01:51she says that she wants to revive ties between the two sides after a series of incidents
01:58in the waters around Jinmen that have brought ties between Taiwan and China worse than they
02:05already were. In one example, two Chinese nationals were killed in a chase with the
02:11Taiwanese Coast Guard. Taiwan recently handed back their bodies to China and China then
02:18released some fissures that it had been holding in detention. So Chen says she wants to build
02:25on this positive momentum in relations, in her words, to get tourists back to Jinmen.
02:33And so Louise, why is Jinmen pushing for Chinese tourists to return rather than Taiwan as a
02:38whole? Well, China and Taiwan have had restrictions on tourist visiting. That's because of the
02:48pandemic. And it's also because of the general poor state of their relations. Well, Taiwan
02:54last year, it did lift some of its restrictions on Chinese tourists visiting. It's already
03:02called on China multiple times to allow its tourists to visit Taiwan. But so far, China
03:10has only allowed some tourists to visit another group of outlying islands, Matsu. And they
03:17saw the first Chinese tour groups in several years visit in June. So Jinmen, like Matsu,
03:24it's geographically close to China and it has lots of family links. But being that close
03:32historically, it was on the front lines of conflict back in the 1950s. It saw intense
03:38bombardment from Mao Zedong's Chinese forces. And today, people in Jinmen see themselves
03:47as close to China, not just geographically, but also as a bit of a political and cultural
03:55go-between. They depend on China for trade. Tourism is a big part of that. So they'll
04:02be hoping that this delegation's trip to Beijing helps bring back some of the tourists that
04:09have been missing for the past few years.