TAIPEI, Taiwan — More than 100 Chinese tourists arrived in Taiwan today on the first regularly scheduled direct flight from the mainland in nearly six decades.
The China Southern Airlines flight from Guangzhou was the first of nine Chinese charter flights scheduled to land in Taiwan today. Taiwan’s China Airlines also flew more than 300 Taiwanese on a charter flight to Shanghai earlier in the day.
The historic step — the result of diplomatic efforts by new Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou — is aimed at warming relations between the self-ruled island of 23 million people and its powerful neighbor, which claims the island as its territory.
An initial 36 weekend flights will connect major cities on mainland China with Taiwan’s airports, in the first direct service since the two entities split amid civil war in 1949. More than 600 Chinese guests are due to arrive today in weeklong package tours.
“The mainlanders will be our guests,” Taiwanese Premier Liu Chao-shiuan said Thursday. “I hope we can work together to impress them with the Taiwanese people’s good nature, politeness, passion and hospitality.”
Taiwan had barred direct travel to and from China for decades as a security measure, but it has allowed limited charter flights in recent years, during Chinese holidays, that stopped over in Hong Kong or other transit points.
While the Chinese tourism push in Taiwan is in its infancy, traffic in the other direction is well established with about 4 million Taiwanese visiting the mainland annually.
Taiwan hopes the commercial service will be extended to weekdays in coming months, with the aim of attracting 1 million Chinese tourists annually, up from just 80,000 last year, officials say.
