Taiwan and China launch direct weekend flights today

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan and China, political rivals for six decades, will launch direct weekend charter flights on Friday, potentially letting millions of tourists visit the island in a historic move heralding a further warming of relations.

Thirty-six round-trip routes will open between self-ruled Taiwan and China, which claims the island as its own, eliminating wasteful Hong Kong or Macau stopovers for China-bound Taiwan investors and easing group travel from the other side.

There have been no regular direct flights, aside from a few charters on select holidays, since 1949, when defeated Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan amid civil war.

The flights are likely to give a boost to carriers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait at the expense of Hong Kong, but probably not until all restrictions are lifted.

Top negotiators from China and Taiwan agreed last month to the weekend charter flights. They also decided to let as many as 3,000 Chinese tourists a day visit the island, which has seen them as a security risk previously but now wants their money.

The huge influx of tourists will be from China to Taiwan as Taiwanese can already travel to China as tourists, although not directly.

"It will have positive meaning for relations between the two sides," said Li Peng, assistant Taiwan Research Institute director at Xiamen University in China. "Exchanges and encounters will increase, helping each side understand the other."

China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has vowed to bring the island under its rule, by force if necessary.

But relations have warmed under Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, who took office on May 20 after winning a landslide election victory on pledges to revitalize the local economy with stronger China trade and transit ties.

Lured by a common language, lower labor costs and a potentially huge consumer market, Taiwan investors have poured an estimated $100 billion into China. About 1 million Taiwanese now live on the mainland.

But Taiwan has been cautious about letting Chinese in, citing security concerns.

TRAVEL SCRAMBLE

Airports, airlines and travel agents are scrambling to prepare for Friday's flights.

Typical is Taipei's domestic airport, which has lost business due to competition from a high-speed north-south rail link. It has spent T$30 million ($988,752) on 16 new international immigration lines and three gates dedicated to the China flights.

The airport can handle 16 China planeloads per day at first, said the facility's managing director Shiau Deng-ke.
"We hadn't invested that much before, and in the past month we've pulled all this together," Shiau said. "Most comments have been positive."

But Taiwan's domestic airport and seven other China-ready airports have come under fire from politicians and the media for what they consider too few flights, lax security or poor disease control measures.

"The government hasn't done well enough, and the airports are not ready," charged Cheng Wen-tsang, promotions director with Taiwan's main opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

Seats are still open on many of the July 4 flights, though the maiden trip from Taiwan is sold out and the first flight from China was nearly full as of Wednesday afternoon.

The flights run between Taiwan to the Chinese cities of Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai and Xiamen and back.
Although the routes are dubbed weekend charters, they run Friday through Monday. Only travel agents can sell tickets.
President Ma has said he estimates 50 million Chinese would want to visit hard-to-reach Taiwan.

But the first groups will arrive on the island amid local concerns about rude behavior, cheap spending habits and the potential for political disputes.

Chinese tourism officials have insisted their citizens will be polite, though they are demanding travel agents give briefings to tourists before departure on Taiwanese customs and the island's "basic situation."

"If overall the Chinese tourists deliver in terms of monetary expectations, these issues will be minor, but otherwise in three to six months you could hear some complaints, some backlash," said Raymond Wu, a political risk consultant in Taipei. (For related story please see)