Mainland to lift entry-permit requirement for Taiwan residents

A man holding an umbrella cycles past a tourism advertisement in Taipei, Taiwan

The Chinese mainland will remove entry permit requirements for Taiwan residents, as top political advisor Yu Zhengsheng vowed to boost exchanges across the Taiwan Strait yesterday.
Yu, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, announced the plan during a speech at the seventh Straits Forum, the largest annual event for cross-Strait exchanges, in Xiamen in the southeastern province of Fujian.
Currently, Taiwan residents must apply for a visa-like entry permit in order to visit the mainland.
A passport-like document known as a ‘Taibaozheng’, which is used for carrying the entry permits for Taiwan residents, will also be made into a card, Yu said. The document also serves as identification during a stay on the mainland.
The plan to offer the permit-free policy was announced as Yu promised to create better conditions for cross-Straits exchanges.
“We’ll continue to expand people-to-people exchanges across the Strait and engage more Taiwan compatriots in the trend of cross-Strait interaction,” Yu said.
Cross-Strait exchanges and travel only became widely possible after 2008, when the Kuomintang (KMT) adopted mainland-friendly policies and the two sides opened direct mail, transport and trade links.
Official statistics show in 2014, Taiwan residents made 5.37 million visits to the mainland, up from 4.36 million in 2008. Mainlanders made 4.04 million visits to Taiwan last year, compared with 280,000 in 2008.
As part of a breakthrough in cross-Strait ties, residents in three mainland cities were allowed to visit Taiwan as individual tourists in 2011 in a friendly bid to boost Taiwan’s tourism. So far, residents in 47 cities have been given such permits.
Taiwan and China have been ruled separately since 1949 when the Communist Party forced the KMT to flee the mainland after a civil war. Xinhua

kmt closer to naming presidential nominee

Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang Party took a step closer to naming its nominee for next year’s presidential elections after polling at the weekend showed the current vice president of the legislature is a viable candidate.
The survey, conducted June 12 and 13 to gauge how favorably voters viewed Hung Hsiu-chu and how she might fare against the opposition party’s nominee, determined her to be a viable candidate, Kuomintang Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan said at a press briefing yesterday. The party’s central committee will meet Wednesday to finalize a roster to be put before a party congress on July 19, where a formal nomination will take place. The election scheduled for Jan. 16 will end the reign of the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou, who was first elected in 2008 and served the two-term limit. One of the main issues will be Taiwan’s relationship with China – with the KMT in favor of closer ties with the mainland than the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party.