First individual Chinese tourists arrive in Taiwan (AP)

TAIPEI, Taiwan – The first individual Chinese tourists have begun arriving in Taiwan amid steadily warming ties between the two sides.

Dozens arrived Tuesday, underscoring Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's continuing efforts to forge closer China relations, the centerpiece of his 3-year-old administration.

Previously Chinese tourists could only travel to Taiwan in supervised groups.

Last year 1.6 million Chinese tourists visited the island.

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949. Beijing continues to claim Taiwan as its territory.

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First Chinese solo tourists head to Taiwan: Xinhua (AFP)

BEIJING (AFP) – 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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Taiwan's legislature may open to Chinese tourists (AP)

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Taiwan's parliamentary speaker has said he will consider opening the legislative floor to Chinese tourists so they can learn from the island's freewheeling democracy.

Lawmaker Wu Yu-sheng of the ruling Nationalist Party proposed late Friday that the legislature open its floor to the visiting Chinese because "out of all places in Taiwan, the legislature is where democracy is most thoroughly implemented."

Speaker Wang Jin-pyng agreed to study the proposal to help spread the island's democracy to authoritarian China, according to television reports.

More than 600,000 Chinese tourists visited Taiwan last year. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949 and China still claims the democratic island a part of its own territory, but ties have improved substantially under Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou's three-year efforts to engage China economically.

Taiwanese tour operators say many Chinese tourists — used to the propaganda programs on state TV — have asked to stay in their hotels to watch the freewheeling TV political talk shows on Taiwan.

The United Daily News said a number of Chinese college students had received a "shock education" when interning at Taiwan's legislature.

"They were surprised that our lawmakers could question and even shout at senior government officials," the report said.

Taiwan's senior officials, from the premier to all ministers, regularly deliver reports to the legislature and patiently answer lawmakers' questions in lengthy sessions. Following Taiwan's transformation to democracy in the 1990s, lawmakers frequently ripped off microphones and brawled with their colleagues over differences, but such displays have given way to verbal debates in recent years.

Taiwan's leaders hope the visiting Chinese envy the island's freedoms and human rights and in turn demand that their government relax its strict political controls.

The influx of Chinese tourists has brought a business bonanza to Taiwanese luxury hotels, stores for designer goods as well as souvenir and snack vendors. Chinese tourists have had to travel in supervised group tours, out of fear some of them may stay behind to work illegally, but Taiwan officially allowed them to travel on their own earlier this week. The first independent Chinese tourists are scheduled to arrive Tuesday.

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