China to resume Taiwan-bound travel for Fujian Province residents

China said it will resume Taiwan-bound travel for residents of Fujian Province in the country’s southeast during a meeting on Sunday with the island’s opposition parliamentarians.

Rao Quan, China’s vice culture and tourism minister, made the remarks to Nationalist Party legislators when they met ahead of the May 20 inauguration of President-elect Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing views as a separatist.

The vice minister said Beijing will first restart the travel of Fujian residents to Matsu, a remote group of Taiwan islands, and then allow group tours to other parts of the self-ruled territory after resuming ferry services between Pingtan County of Fujian and Taiwan.

He also told the group led by veteran opposition lawmaker Fu Kun-chi that Beijing welcomes Taiwan compatriots to visit the mainland for sightseeing and to see the development and changes there, according to the Chinese ministry.

The mainland has banned individual Chinese tourists, including Fujian residents, from traveling to Taiwan since August 2019 amid a deterioration of cross-strait ties under the rule of the island’s government led by the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party starting in 2016.

China’s General Administration of Customs also said Sunday it will approve the import of pomelo and other agriculture and fishery products from Taiwan, given that they meet the mainland’s quarantine requirements, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The decision came as Zhao Zenglian, deputy chief of the customs authority, with the 17-member delegation of the Taiwan opposition party, also known as Kuomintang (KMT).

Fu expressed hope that products from all industries in Taiwan, especially high-quality agriculture and fishery products, can be successfully marketed to the mainland, Xinhua added.

Beijing, which views Taiwan as part of its territory, has treated the KMT favorably while rejecting talks with the DPP government and denouncing Lai as an independence advocate. In the island’s parliament, the opposition party now has the largest number of seats.

On Saturday, the legislators held talks with Wang Huning, who is ranked No. 4 in the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s top leadership. In early April, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with former Taiwanese leader Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT in Beijing.

Communist-led China and Taiwan have been governed separately since they split in 1949 due to a civil war, with the then-ruling KMT government retreating to Taiwan.

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