Taiwan ruling party chief says China air link vital

Taipei - The chairman of Taiwan's ruling KMT party said on Saturday air links with China and opening up Taiwan to Chinese tourists is vital for peace. Wu Poh-hsiung made the remarks at a banquet for a 60-member Chinese tourism inspection delegation, led by Shao Qiwei, director of the China National Tourism Administration, which arrived Friday when Taiwan launched weekend charter flights with China and began to accept Chinese tourists. More than 760 Chinese flew to Taiwan as the 'inaugural tour group' when six Chinese and five Taiwan airlines operated a total of 18 round-trip charter flights. In his speech, Wu said charter flights and tourism groups coming to Taiwan are an important step towards cross-straits peace. 'Some media criticized the charter flights, saying some of the flights were almost empty. They will find themselves wrong in two or three 3 months,' he said. 'According to a survey conducted in China, at least some 50 million mainlanders want to visit Taiwan. So if 1 million mainlanders visit Taiwan each year, it will take 50 years for all of them to have visited Taiwan,' he said. Wu warned Taiwan's service industry not to look down upon China and Chinese tourists. 'I have visited China several times, and found that their tourist facilities are much better than ours. The hotels and airports in Beijing and Shanghai are modern and luxurious. However, Taiwan has its own characteristics. The Taiwan island is a very beautiful place,' he noted. Taiwan has banned air, sea and trade links with China since 1949, when the Republic of China government lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan to set up its government-in-exile. In 1987, Taiwan allowed its citizens to visit China, by transiting through a third place, usually Hong Kong, but continued to bar mainlanders from entering Taiwan for security reasons. After Ma Ying-jeou of the pro-China KMT became president on May 20, he sought to seek peace with China and put aside political differences, like unification an independence.