Over Taiwan Straits, historic flights take off

(chinadaily.com.cn/Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-04 16:17

The pilot of the China Southern Airline plane carrying the first group of mainland tourists of the day to arrive in Taiwan from Guangzhou, waves after landing at the Taoyuan International Airport July 4, 2008. [Agencies] Click for more photos

The Chinese mainland and Taiwan witnessed their historic regular flights being officially launched on Friday, in an apparent sign of accelerating conciliation and getting to each other nearer and closer.

The first of the flights, a China Southern Airlines plane, landed at Taipei's Taoyuan airport after leaving Guangzhou in southern China early in the early morning. The flight, which took off at 6:30 am from Guangzhou, arrived in Taipei at 8:10 am after 1,124-km direct journey. There is no time difference between the mainland and Taiwan.

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It was followed a short time later by four other direct flights from the southern port city of Xiamen, capital city of Beijing, business hub Shanghai, and eastern city of Nanjing, where China's Kuomintang (KMT) Party once had its headquarters in the 1940s.

A total of 760 mainland tourists are on the direct flights to Taiwan and will stay there for 10 days, Xinhua reported.

No such regular flights, aside from a few charters on select Chinese holidays, such as the Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, have flown since 1949, when a civil war between the KMT and the Communist Party of China (CPC) ended. CPC won the war.

Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT Party won decisively in March in the Taiwan election and took office in May on pledges to revitalize the island economy with closer trade and transit ties to the mainland, which has a sizzling economy. Ma has estimated that 50 million mainlanders would visit Taiwan.

Since Ma took office, his administration has also introduced a raft of other reform measures as well, many designed to make it easier for Taiwan businessmen to invest in the mainland.

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