Legal Research On Cross-strait Tourism Cooperation Under ECFA

Recently, the global tourism industry is in a period of vigorous development, allcountries and regions in the world are committed to the development of tourism. Notuntil the1960s, tourism began to develop in a larger scale. Only after half a century ofdevelopment, the tourism industry has become the largest industry in the world.According to the estimation of UNWTO, the tourism industry will represent an annualincrease of4%in the first20years of20th century. In2018, about10.5%of GDP willbe made from global tourism economy. Since tourism can bring huge economicbenefits, the Mainland and Taiwan have both attached great importance to the tourismindustry. However, cross-strait tourism cooperation has experienced a tortuousprocess of development.Since modern and contemporary times, due to historical and political reasons, theeconomic and trade cooperation between Mainland and Taiwan has bogged to astandstill, the tourism cooperation is even worse. In2008, the tourism cooperation hada great-leap-forward development after Kuomintang of Taiwan came into power again.It adopted a more open policy towards the mainland China. In addition, both sides ofthe strait have started the direct charter flights and "Da San Tong". These policies notonly make communications across the Taiwan Strait become more time-saving,economical, convenient, but also create favorable conditions for the furtherdevelopment of cross-strait tourism cooperation. Tourism has become one of the mostimportant ways to deepen exchange between the both sides at present.In the background of this common desire, Cross-strait Economic CooperationFramework Agreement (ECFA) was signed formally on June29th,2010. Deepencooperation between the both sides will enter upon a new phase.The indisputable fact is that the signing of ECFA will further promote tourismcooperation across the Taiwan Strait. Therefore, the author creatively put forward anidea that the both sides would develop tourism cooperation under the framework ofECFA. The author also points out that tourism cooperation could be one part of ECFA,and it has a reasonable legal basis. At present, ECFA as a framework agreement is in the subsequent negotiation stage. In order to facilitate cross-strait tourism, the authorput forward a thinking of improving ECFA agreement on tourism market openingcommitments by using CEPA’s contents for reference. As cross-strait tourismcooperation is developing rapidly, protections of tourists’ and tourism serviceprovider’s rights should not be ignored. The protections will become legal insuranceof the healthy and sustainable development of the tourism industry. Based on theabove discussion, this paper describes the main forms of travel disputes in cross-straittourism and provides several recommendations to solve them.