Nine years ago, when Taiwan was being ruled by Chen Shui-bien's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, Taipei announced the granting of visas to Hong Kong visitors on arrival. The move was welcomed by travellers, who were saved the four-week wait that had previously been necessary when applying for an entry permit.
But the concession was criticised by pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong, who were suspicious that it was a hostile move by Taipei aiming to claim sovereign status for itself.
It would have been difficult at that time to imagine how a further relaxation of visa requirements by the island could be warmly received by the Hong Kong special administrative region's government. But now it has happened: last Tuesday, Taiwan's National Immigration Agency announced that Hong Kong people can obtain free visas for visits of up to 30 days just by applying online and printing out an official slip of paper at home. The initiative was welcomed by the city's finance minister, John Tsang Chun-wah, who was in Taipei for high-level meetings with Taiwan's ministers and business leaders.
The change in attitude was clearly not a result of the new visa policy itself. Rather, it marked the shift in sentiment between the governments of Hong Kong and Taiwan in the new era of warming cross-strait ties since the Kuomintang, the nationalist party, returned to rule on the island in 2008.
Hong Kong and Taiwan are the fourth-largest trading partners of each other. The two places are also popular travel destinations for each other's residents, with Taiwanese having made 2 million trips here last year and Hongkongers taking 600,000 tours there.
Despite the close economic and civil ties between the territories, the relationship between the two governments is fragile, often following the ups and downs of cross-strait politics. For the 12 years following Hong Kong's handover, there were no official visits at ministerial level between the two places, until Taiwan's then Financial Supervisory Commission chairman Sean Chen came to the city and Hong Kong's Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam Sui-lung visited Taipei in June last year.