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Updated Tuesday, April 20, 2010 10:22 am TWN, By Chinmei Sung, Bloomberg

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Chinese may top Japanese for first time as top Taiwan visitors

TAIPEI -- Chinese visitors to Taiwan may surpass Japanese for the first time on record as relaxed rules spur travel to an island off limits to mainlanders for 60 years.

Taiwan will receive 1.2 million tourists and businesspeople from China, exceeding the forecast 1.13 million Japanese in 2010, Yuan Kai-zhi, who works at the tourism bureau's international division in Taipei, said in an interview. Japan, which ruled Taiwan for 50 years until its defeat in World War II, has been the No. 1 source of visitors since records began in 1964.

The island dropped a ban on Chinese tourists in July 2008, two months after President Ma Ying-jeou took office and abandoned his predecessor's pro-independence stance. The almost 200,000 Chinese that visited during the remainder of that year soared five-fold in 2009 as people seized the opportunity to cross the 180-kilometer (112 mile) Taiwan Strait.

“People are curious about the things that have been prohibited to them,” said Christopher Wong, a Hong-Kong based economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. “Chinese and Taiwanese have a similar cultural background and speak the same language, and that makes travel easier.”

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