Mainland tourists may soon be visiting

beaches like this one in Taiwan after

Beijing relaxed rules.

 

 

China has had tight restrictions on its people visiting Taiwan since 1949 when the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island at the end of the Chinese civil war.

A limited number of mainlanders have been able to travel there on business.

Ultimately, it is up to the Taiwan government under independence-leaning President Chen Shui-bian to decide if the floodgates are opened. Taiwan has its own tough rules restricting mainland visitors.

Beijing views the island as a breakaway province which must eventually be unified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Chinese tourists have proven a potent economic force. In the year or so since China relaxed rules on travel to Hong Kong, a tourism boom has boosted retail sales and been an important factor in the territory's economic recovery.

Tourism-related stocks surged in Taipei on Friday morning in anticipation of China relaxing its rules, with the tourism sub index up 6.79 percent by 0433 GMT.

China's National Tourism Bureau would allow mainlanders to join travel agency tours to Taiwan, including a seven-day package for less than 7,000 yuan ($845), the Beijing Morning Post said.

Bureau officials declined to comment, but an announcement was expected later on Friday, media said.

"Taiwan will definitely be an independent tourism destination," the Beijing Times quoted a manager with a travel agency as saying.

Tourists from China's coastal province of Fujian were allowed to visit Taiwan's frontline island of Quemoy in December for the first time since 1949.

Despite political tensions, Taiwan investors have poured up to $100 billion into China since detente first began in the late 1980s, lured by low land and labor costs and a common language and culture.

They have clamored for Taipei to end a decades-old ban on direct trade, transport and mail links between Taiwan and the mainland.

The ban remains in place due to national security considerations. There are no direct flights between the two sides and most travelers go through Hong Kong or Macau.

China has said people from Taiwan made 3.7 million trips to the mainland in 2004, while only 145,000 mainlanders visited Taiwan.

China this month offered to ease restrictions on contacts between the two sides after visits to China by Lien Chan, head of Taiwan's Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, which once ruled all China, and James Soong, head of the island's second-biggest opposition party.