China to allow mainlanders to visit Taiwan - report

BEIJING - China will lift a decades-old ban on mainlanders visiting political rival Taiwan, a move that could ease tension after visits to China by two of the self-ruled island's opposition leaders, state media reported on Friday.

China has barred mainlanders from visiting Taiwan as tourists since 1949 when the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek fled to the island at the end of the Chinese civil war. Mainlanders, however, have been able to travel to Taiwan on business.

Beijing views the island as a breakaway province which must eventually be unified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

China's National Tourism Bureau would allow mainlanders to join travel agency tours to Taiwan, including a seven-day package costing less than 7000 yuan ($1200), the Beijing Morning Post said.

Bureau officials declined to comment, but an announcement was expected later on Friday, media said.

"Taiwan will definitely be an independent tourism destination," the Beijing Times quoted a manager with a travel agent as saying.

Tourists from China's coastal province of Fujian were allowed to visit Taiwan's frontline island of Quemoy in December for the first time since 1949.

Despite political tensions, Taiwan investors have poured up to US$100 billion ($142.3 billion) into China since detente first began in the late 1980s, lured by low land and labour costs and a common language and culture.

They have clamoured for Taipei to end a decades-old ban on direct trade, transport and mail links -- known as the "three links" -- between the Taiwan mainland and China. The ban remains in place due to national security considerations.

China this month offered to ease restrictions on contacts between the two sides after visits to China by Lien Chan, head of Taiwan's Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, which once ruled all China, and James Soong, head of the island's second-biggest opposition party.

- REUTERS