Mainland treads softly on tragedy
The mainland has exercised caution in dealing with two bus accidents on Taiwan's northeast coast in which 20 mainland people went missing as Typhoon Megi struck the island last Thursday.
Mainland regional media outlets have been asked to avoid sending reporters to Taiwan to cover the accidents or writing any independent commentaries on them. Reports - even from media based in Zhuhai, Guangdong, where most of the tourists are from - have been mild and neutral, with little coverage that could stir negative emotion from the mainland public against the island.
Mainland editors told the South China Morning Post yesterday that they believed Beijing authorities did not want the incident to discourage mainland holidaymakers from visiting Taiwan, nor would they want any unfavourable reports that could hurt delicate cross-strait relations.
Yesterday, Beijing sent a senior official to Taiwan to co-ordinate with the local authorities over the rescue mission and the aftermath of the accidents, in which two tour buses transporting mainland tourists were hit by rockslides while on the Suao-Hualien Highway as the typhoon nipped Taiwan.
One tour guide from Beijing and a Taiwanese bus driver were missing after their bus hit the rocks and plunged into a ravine. Nineteen tourists from Beijing, helped by the tour leader and driver, managed to escape beforehand. Another bus with 19 tourists from Guangdong, plus a tour leader and a bus driver from Taiwan, went missing afterwards. 'It's been a week, and we still don't know the whereabouts of the 20 people from the mainland,' said Zhang Shenglin, vice-chairman of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, which represents the mainland in dealings with Taiwan.
She asked Taiwanese authorities to increase personnel and step up their search for the missing people, handle the incident fairly by fully protecting the rights of mainland tourists and learn lessons from the accidents. Zhang also said she hoped the incident would not harm 'further development of cross-strait relations' or 'harm the feelings of the people from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait'.
In her visit to the families of the missing tourists, who arrived in Taiwan on Monday, Zhang patiently listened to complaints from the families who criticised the Taiwanese government for being 'slow and inactive' in rescuing their loved ones.
'Their actions are too slow, too slow, and if they had expanded the search, we wouldn't have this outcome,' one relative said. 'In China, military personnel would be sent, unlike what you in Taiwan would do by sending just a few firefighters.'
Earlier yesterday, 36 relatives went to the accident sites to look for the missing people. One relative, Lin Xueyu - whose husband, Lu Rika, was among the missing - collapsed at the scene and was taken by ambulance to hospital.
Kao Koong-lian, vice-chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, which deals with the mainland, said a large contingent, including the military, was involved in the search.
