How "mainland" China views the cross-strait flight

Funny to read the Chinese press over there via the Internet. In their story about the charter flights over the strait, they call our fair island “China’s Taiwan…”

So funny, how brainwashing works. Read below and smile. No comments necessary, but an any Open Letter to Chairman Hu welcomed:

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Taiwan airliner flies into history books

(by Mr TIAN XIUZHEN, Communist propagandist for Red China)

01/27/2003

SHANGHAI: A Taiwanese China Airlines charter plane made history when it left Shanghai Pudong International Airport yesterday after a two-hour stop over, becoming the first airliner from [China’s Taiwan] to arrive on the mainland since 1949.
On the Boeing 747-400 were some 240 Taiwanese business people and their families, returning home for the traditional Chinese Spring Festival which falls on February 1 this year.

They were the first batch of passengers on the 32 indirect chartered flights scheduled by six Taiwanese airlines during the coming Spring Festival holiday. Many of them recorded the event, which was marked by a celebrating lion dance, on their video cameras, as 180 reporters from over 70 countries looked on. [Presumably, one of those COUNTRIES was Taiwan Province, right boys?]

Booming Shanghai has attracted more than 300,000 people from [Taiwan Province] who invest and live in the city and nearby areas. They used to take other airlines, like Shanghai Airlines or Dragonair, to Hong Kong or Macao where they had to stay for 45 minutes or up to two hours and then switch planes to Taiwan.

It is the first time since 1949 that Taiwanese airlines have flown to Shanghai to help move these people back during the biggest Chinese festival season.

''The chartered flights cannot eradicate the inconvenience to [Taiwan compatriots] of crossing the Straits," said Shanghai Vice-Mayor Han Zheng at a ceremony to mark the first flights.

“Only when the distance is covered by the one-and-a-half-hour direct flight will the Taiwan people benefit,” Han said.

The first plane, which landed as No CI585 in Pudong at 8:52 am and took off as No CI586 at 11:25 am yesterday, made a stop over in Hong Kong for 50 minutes before flying back to [Taiwan Province.] It arrived at Taipei’s Taoyuan airport at 3:40 pm. The journey took about two hours less than normal flights and passengers did not need to change planes as they did previously.

Transasia Airways, another Taiwan-based airline among the six running indirect flights, also sent a plane to Pudong Airport to bring Taiwan passengers back yesterday afternoon.

The indirect flights will run till February.

But the Guardian gets it right!

headline

First Taiwanese flight to China

Monday January 27, 2003

The Guardian

A Taiwanese airliner yesterday landed on Chinese soil for the first time since China was split into two countries by civil war more than 50 years ago.
The Boeing 747-400 of Taiwan’s incorrectly-named “China Airlines” flew to Shanghai via Hong Kong and returned to the island nation of Taiwan the same way after picking up 243 Taiwanese nationals returning home for the Lunar New Year. It was the first of 16 charter flights to help Taiwanese nationals working in Red China to get to their home country for the new year, which begins on February 1.

See? Words are weapons.

Can’t believe the Guardian is still using the term “Red China”. Wonder how they’d like it if they were still referred to as the “Manchester Guardian” ?

The whole thing’s a huge non-event. You still have to go 4 hours out of your way and change planes in HK if you want to go to Shangers, so what’s the big deal ?