PRC and Taiwan representatives as well as hundreds of members of the press from around the world gathered in Macao on January 15th. The knotty issue of charter flights seemed on the verge of breakthrough. Could goodwill be transformed into a concrete agreement? Would these talks open the doors for other matters requiring urgent attention? The media was watching and hoping.
As expected, representatives from Taiwan's civil airlines, led by Billy Chang, director-general of the Civil Aeronautics Administration under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, and delegates from the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the mainland's Civil Aeronautics Administration of China, headed by Pu Zhaozhou, reached a consensus after just over an hour of closed-door negotiations. Representatives laid aside political differences to focus on technical issues. At the close of the meeting, they signed a memorandum of agreement on cross-strait charter flights for this Chinese New Year.
The spirit of the agreement is set forth in the memorandum as "joint participation, opening up multiple destinations, direct, reciprocal flights, with passengers carried in both directions." This year, the charter flights will take place from 29 January to 20 February between Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou in the PRC and Taipei and Kaohsiung. Taiwan, for its part, is allowing Taiwanese businesspeople, their dependants, and individuals whose names are on the Taiwan Business Association's approved name list to use the flights. (Taiwanese students studying in the mainland are not included.)
Following last December's legislative elections, cross-strait tensions seemed high, but both sides were actually working hard behind the scenes. On January 10th, during a reception for KMT legislators visiting China, China's Taiwan Affairs Office announced its willingness to initiate talks to commence New Year charter flights. Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council immediately followed the PRC's lead and, with the blessings of the upper echelons of government, adopted a flexible position for tackling the issue.
Worthy of note are a number of breakthroughs over the 2003 arrangements, including expanding the flight time window and increasing the number of destinations. Taiwan added one more to give one each in the north and south of the island, while the mainland added Beijing and Guangzhou, another area with a high concentration of Taiwanese, to 2003's destination of Shanghai.
As a show of appreciation to China's civil aviation industry for its contributions to the talks, the Taiwanese authorities welcomed aircraft flying under the PRC flag to land in Taiwan.
A number of Taiwanese in the mainland won't be able to enjoy the fruits of these talks, because they had already booked tickets on normal scheduled flights before the negotiations, which could translate into low ticket sales and airlines operating in the red. But Taiwan's six airlines all took the plunge anyway. They have their sights set on the huge profits from direct flights in the future. A total of 48 return flights are scheduled for this Chinese New Year's holiday.
Travel agents are charging about NT$19,000 for roundtrip economy class tickets for flights from Taipei to Beijing through Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year, while a direct roundtrip flight between Taipei and Beijing would cost approximately NT$15,000. But it's the time saved in flight that really grabs your attention-direct charter flights require about three hours as compared to a minimum of seven hours for regular flights. Furthermore, if an agreement can be reached whereby flights no longer need to take a southerly route through Hong Kong-monitored flight areas, the Taipei-Beijing route could be further slashed to two hours and the Taipei-Shanghai route would only require an hour and 20 minutes.
The negotiation process required to reach the charter flight agreement, a feat seemingly hopeless only a short time ago, succeeded because governments on both sides of the strait recognized that politics should take a back seat to the needs of the people. The flexibility shown in these negotiations sets a precedent for many other pressing cross-strait issues. Other issues, such as normalization of charter flights for important holidays, direct flights across the strait, and relaxing regulations for mainland visits to Taiwan, cannot be far behind.
Lu Xun's celebrated statement, "A smile can melt away enmity between brothers" encapsulates the cross-strait atmosphere surrounding the first Koo-Wang meeting. Despite Koo's death, the PRC and Taiwan both showed wisdom and flexibility in these Chinese New Year charter flight talks. Had he been alive today, Mr. Koo would surely have been very pleased.
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