Taiwan media, business people welcome charter flights, mainland tourists

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-7-5  |     ONLINE EDITION

TAIWAN media and business people today welcomed the new weekend charter flights carrying mainland tourists as good news for ties across the Taiwan Strait and for the economy.

The event made headlines such as "We have been waiting for this moment for 60 years!", "Spring time for Taiwan aviation industry, "and "a day trip across the Strait".

Taiwan's United Daily News devoted three full pages to the flights with stories headlined "Soybean milk at Yonghe (a popular Taiwan fast food chain store) for breakfast and steamed buns for lunch in Shanghai," "No more transfers and win your afternoon back". One of stories, titled "A business trip to Shanghai in one day", described how the charter flights could change a Taiwan business person's life.

A commentary by writer Yang Du in the same newspaper said charter flights and mainland tourists would "draw the cross-Strait cultures even closer to each other psychologically".

Taiwan's "China Times" published an editorial that said "weekend charter flights will change Taiwan people's lives", and "will help develop Taiwan's economy with a much freer flow of people and investment".

Meanwhile, business people in Taiwan also hailed the events as economically beneficial to Taiwan.

Taiwan Business Association chairman Chang Ping-Chao took a charter flight of Taiwan's China Airlines on Friday from Taipei to Beijing. The seven or eight-hour trip had been reduced to four hours.

"So I arrived in Beijing at 1:30 pm and still had the afternoon and evening available," Chang said.

China Airlines spokesman Chen Peng-Yu said the mainland economy had been developing rapidly, but Taiwan's airline companies could not get a share of the mainland market before. The weekend charter flights would enable them to have a more complete network and develop better.