‘We need to stop using smearing language about Chinese people, especially on the Internet.’
The News Lens
Date: 2016/09/08
By: J. Michael Cole
As tour operators prepare to protest next Monday to call on the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration
Photo Credit: AP/達志影像
to help the sagging tourism industry, a spokesman for the Travel Agent Association of the R.O.C. Taiwan attributes a drop in Chinese tourists to online rudeness by the Taiwanese.
Ringo Lee (李奇嶽), spokesman for the Association, said on Wednesday that dwindling numbers in Chinese arrivals to Taiwan were not the result of a decision by Chinese authorities to punish the Tsai administration for refusing to acknowledge the so-called “1992 consensus,” but rather “smearing language” used by Taiwanese netizens to refer to Chinese people.
According to Mainland Affairs Council statistics released this week, the number of Chinese tourist arrivals to Taiwan has dropped 22 percent since President Tsai’s inauguration on May 20 over the same period last year. On Aug. 31, Minister of Transportation and Communications Ho Chen Tan (賀陳旦) projected a decrease of 600,000 Chinese tourists to Taiwan this year from the 4.18 million in 2015. [FULL STORY]
