First Chinese solo tourists head to Taiwan: Xinhua

Nearly 300 solo Chinese travellers on Tuesday headed to Taiwan, state media said, days after Taipei lifted a decades-old ban on trips to the island by individual tourists from the mainland.

The tourists from Beijing, Shanghai and the city of Xiamen on the southeast coast left China by plane or ship, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Travel between Taiwan and China stopped at the end of the civil war in 1949, and mainland tourists have so far only been allowed to visit Taiwan in groups due to official concerns they might overstay their visas to work illegally.

Initially, Taiwan will allow 500 individual arrivals from the mainland per day, in the hopes that the visitors will help promote peace across the Strait.

"The Chinese tourists will all be peace ambassadors," Maa Shaw-chang, deputy secretary-general to Taiwan's quasi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, told AFP last week.

Initially, the programme applies to residents of the three Chinese cities while residents of the coastal province of Fujian, where Xiamen is located, also will be allowed to travel individually to the Taiwan-controlled islands of

Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu.

Taiwan's United Daily News reported Saturday that solo Chinese tourists may be allowed to visit the island's parliament.

Travel between the two sides has boomed since President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan's China-friendly Kuomintang party came to power in 2008, pledging to boost trade links and tourism.

A ban on mainland Chinese travel to Taiwan was lifted by the two sides the same year.

Last year, more than 1.63 million Chinese visited Taiwan -- most of them on organised group tours, the rest on business, family and study trips -- a rise of 67 percent from a year before, making China the biggest source of visitors to the island, according to Taipei.

Beijing still considers self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, despite their split in 1949.

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