Restrictions on ferry travel from China to Taiwan and back to China

Question

I plan to travel from China to Taiwan and back to China on a ferry. Recently I have read that China is restricting individual tourism to Taiwan. Article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49178314 Does this also apply for EU Citizen which are traveling individual?

Answer 1

Summary: Not from a legal/policy perspective, as the restriction only applies to Mainland Chinese residents. It is difficult to gauge how that affects the ferry you are planning to take though (given there will be less tourist traffic).

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The BBC article the OP linked contains a link to a notice by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the PRC. It reads:

海峡两岸旅游交流协会关于暂停大陆居民赴台个人游试点的公告

鉴于当前两岸关系，决定自2019年8月1日起暂停47个城市大陆居民赴台个人游试点。
特此公告。

海峡两岸旅游交流协会

2019年7月31日

A rough translation goes as:

Notice on suspending the trial on allowing Mainland Chinese residents to travel to Taiwan for individual tourism, from the Association For Tourism Exchange Across The Taiwan Straits

In light of current cross-strait relation, we have decided to suspend the trial that enables mainland Chinese residents from 47 cities to travel to Taiwan for individual tourism from 1 Aug 2019.

The Association For Tourism Exchange Across The Taiwan Straits

31 Jul 2019

The trial quoted was explicitly set up to enable self-guided tours from mainland Chinese residents, which was expected to boost tourist numbers (and the tourism industry) in Taiwan when the relation between China and Taiwan was better. It is narrow in scope given that it only covers mainland Chinese residents from 47 cities.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no other sources that indicated that package tours, or citizens/nationals from other countries are affected by this particular ban.