Relations between Taipei and Beijing remain fraught but the head of Taiwan’s top China policy body did not say in a circulating interview clip that he did not want Chinese tourists visiting the island. The false posts shared part of a longer interview that actually shows he was repeating the opinion of some Taiwanese residents and not his personal view. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said it welcomes Chinese tourists after Beijing announced it would resume some group tours to the island in the near future.
The 14-second clip of Chiu Chui-cheng, head of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) was shared on Weibo on December 30, 2024. The MAC manages China-related issues.
He can be heard saying: “We do not hope for huge numbers of Chinese tourists, it will lower the quality of tourism and cause chaos. Chinese tourists are part of low-priced tours that cause our high-quality tourism industry to disappear. Would they use Chinese tourists to punish Taiwan.”
The simplified Chinese post repeats his statement, adding: “Taiwan does not need Chinese tourists, it only needs, and will only understand, China’s missiles.”
Screenshot of the false Weibo post, captured on February 7, 2025
The video was also shared elsewhere on Facebook and Weibo, as well as on TikTok sister app Douyin, garnering over one million views.
Screenshot of the false videos shared on Douyin, captured on February 7, 2025
While Taiwan calls itself a sovereign nation, China claims the island and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control.
Leaders from both sides have maintained travel restrictions on travel across the strait, even though their populations share strong social, cultural and family ties (archived link).
Beijing stopped issuing individual travel permits for Taiwan in 2019, while group travel was suspended in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2023, Taiwan has lifted restrictions on some individual mainland tourists, but large-scale group tours have yet to resume.
China’s culture and tourism ministry said in January some group tours will resume for residents of Shanghai and Fujian province — which lies just across the strait from Taiwan — but has not given a specific timeline (archived link).
In response, the MAC said that Taiwan “welcomes mainland tourists to travel,” adding it was waiting for China to announce “specific measures”.
“We… will communicate on the safety, quality, and stability of tourism as soon as possible via the two (tourism) agencies to facilitate the smooth implementation of resuming tourism exchanges in the future,” MAC said.
Meanwhile, keyword searches on Google and YouTube found that the video of Chiu’s interview was shared out of context.
False attribution
Taiwanese broadcaster Formosa Television (FTV) uploaded the interview segment to YouTube on December 24, 2024 in a report about how Chiu had handled a visit to Taipei by Shanghai officials that month (archived links here and here).
The full video shows Chiu was in fact referring to calls made to the MAC regarding Chinese tourists in Taiwan. “We received over 100 phone calls saying ‘to ensure the quality of Taiwanese tourism we do not wish for large numbers of Chinese tourists and causing chaos’,” Chiu said at the video’s 1:16-mark.
“The mainlanders come in with low-priced tours, which makes a lot of high-quality tourism disappear… We in Taiwan have different views on these external problems,” he continued.
Screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false posts (left) and the original footage uploaded by FTV (right)
Chinese tourists ‘important channel’
FTV later uploaded Chiu’s full interview on December 29, 2024 (archived link). In it, Chiu further discussed Taiwan’s attitude towards Chinese tourists visiting the island.
“Of course, Chinese tourists are an important channel for promoting understanding between people on both sides of the strait and is an important diplomatic policy that will help ease cross-strait relations,” Chiu went on to say at the video’s 7:55-mark.
However, he also stressed that the relationship needed to be based on order and mutual respect, without one side threatening the other with military action or with “policies that punish Taiwan”.
