Taipei under pressure to allow in People's Daily, Xinhua
A move by Beijing to partially lift restrictions on mainland access to the websites of two pro-reunification Taiwanese media websites could encourage Taipei to consider reissuing press passes to People's Daily and Xinhua reporters, a Taiwanese official said.
Liu Te-shun, a spokesman for the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) in Taipei, said it had been informed that Beijing had eased restrictions on the websites of the China Times and the United Daily News in Beijing and parts of Guangdong.
'We welcome Beijing's positive response to our one-year-long appeal [to lift the bans on the Taiwanese media websites],' Mr Liu said. 'But we hope this partial measure will be further expanded to all netizens on the mainland as soon as possible.'
He said that when Beijing eased its online ban completely and allowed the mainland's provincial and municipal media to send correspondents to Taiwan, that would be the proper time for Taipei to reopen its arms to reporters from Xinhua and the People's Daily.
Taipei barred reporters from the mainland's top official media outlets from working on the island in April 2005 after Beijing passed its Anti-Secession Law a month earlier.
