Tourism development across the Taiwan Strait

Abstract

This article examines the tourism development between Taiwan and China over the last three decades under different political situation. First, Taiwan's democratization in the 1980s made the control over outbound travel to China no longer necessary. Meanwhile, the Taiwanese visitors were welcomed at the time when China's foreign currency was in deficiency. Second, the opening up of mainland Chinese visitors to Taiwan since 2008 marked another breakthrough in the Cross- Strait tourism development. However, as the opening up of Chinese tourists to Taiwan is based on the same "political consensus" between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and KMT in Taiwan, any dissimilar political agreements in the future may lead China to constrain the number Chinese tourists to the island. Third, the rapidly growing number of Chinese tourists brought much business benefit to the various tourism sectors in Taiwan. Nonetheless, the contribution to Taiwan's economy is in doubt due to the insignificant tourism sector in Taiwan's overall economy. From the current perspective, the tourism development across the Strait is more politically symbolic than substantive. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012.