Taiwan eases restrictions on Chinese business visitors

Taipei - Taiwan on Saturday eased restrictions on Chinese business visitors to prepare for the commencement of regular flights across the Taiwan Strait. Under the new rule, Chinese businessmen or professionals visiting Taiwan for professional purposes can stay in Taiwan for a maximum of 30 days, up from the current 14 days, the National Immigration Agency said. The agency dropped the requirement that Chinese professional delegations must enter and leave Taiwan as one group - a method currently used to prevent Chinese from staying on to work illegally in Taiwan. The agency also relaxed the limit on the number of Chinese professionals a Taiwan company can invite in a year. Under the current rule, a Taiwan company with a capital of less than 30 million Taiwan dollars (about 1 million US) can only invite a maximum of 15 Chinese professionals each year, and a company with a larger capital can invite maximum of 50 Chinese professionals each year. Under the new rule, the 15 and 50 visitor-limit for the two types of companies will be expanded to 30 and 200, respectively. The time for a Taiwan company to submit its application to invite Chinese professionals will be cut from the current one month before the Chinese guests' arrival to 14 days before their arrival. However, the restrictions on Chinese tourists remain unchanged - they can only visit Taiwan as tour groups and must remain together. 'These changes are made at the request of Taiwan enterprises, to cope with increased Taiwan-China trade contacts and to prepare for the launch of regular flights across the Taiwan Strait,' the National Immigration Agency said in a statement. After being cut off for six decades, Taiwan and China launched holiday charter flights in 2003, which was expanded to weekend charter flights in July 2008 and upgraded to daily charter flights in December 2008. The two sides plan to launch regular flights on late July or early August, depending on the preparation of the two sides' airlines.