The fire engulfing the tour bus Tuesday killed 26 people, 24 Chinese tourists from the northeastern Liaoning province, along with a Taiwanese tour guide and bus driver. The tragedy occurred just hours before the tour group was scheduled to leave Taiwan at the end of a one-week trip.
It was the worst bus fire in Taiwan’s history. The government immediately established an emergency response center and notified China. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office also activated a mechanism of its own and sent a working group to the island to help handle the situation.
Since the government opened up Taiwan to Chinese tourists in 2008, 83 have died and nearly 160 have been injured in various accidents. In April 2009, three died after their bus was hit by a crane in operation in downtown Taipei. A year and a half later, 20 more died when another tour bus overturned and fell into a river on the Suhua Highway in a rockslide triggered by Typhoon Megi. In 2015, many Chinese tourists were killed when a TransAsia Airways flight crashed into a river in Taipei.
In an editorial titled “Tour buses again! How dare Taiwanese Talk About their Quality Services?” the Taiwan-based Storm Media Group voiced strong criticism of lax rules governing tour buses and lax efforts to enforce them. The article said it’s an open secret in Taiwan that all tour buses, except for those owned by Kuo-Kuang Motor Transport, are partially assembled in Taiwan using imported underbodies. There is little oversight on how this is done.
Taiwan saw 10 million tourist arrivals last year, with Chinese tourists accounting for 40%. Government statistics show that Chinese tourist arrivals in May were down 12% compared with last year, and the number was even lower in June. It is generally believed that China has been trying to put pressure on President Tsai Ing-wen because of her refusal to tow its line. But Tuesday’s tragedy could see the number of Chinese tourists coming to Taiwan drop even further.