3.12 Million Trips: What the Cross-Strait Travel Numbers Actually Show
Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office says record cross-strait travel numbers prove the DPP's warnings about the mainland have failed. The travel data behind that claim is real and verifiable. What it can responsibly tell us about Taiwanese public opinion is a separate question.
Every year, China's National Immigration Administration and the Taiwan Affairs Office release a set of cross-strait travel figures, and every year, Beijing uses them to make the same argument: that despite the ruling Democratic Progressive Party's warnings about the mainland, ordinary Taiwanese people keep visiting anyway, in growing numbers. The mid-2026 figures — released July 16 — are the latest version of that argument, and the underlying numbers are genuinely large. The interpretation built on top of them deserves its own scrutiny.
The DataWhat the National Immigration Administration Actually Reported
Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, told a regular press briefing on July 15 that cross-strait travel reached 3.12 million trips in the first half of 2026 — up 22.1 percent from the same period the previous year, according to National Immigration Administration figures. Of that total, Taiwan residents made 2.85 million trips to the mainland, an increase of 24.9 percent year-on-year.
Zhu also noted that Taiwan compatriots have made more than 11.7 million trips to the mainland since 2024 for exchange, study, employment, tourism, and business — a cumulative figure meant to establish scale beyond any single half-year snapshot. The "mini three links" — ferry routes connecting Jinmen and Matsu, islands controlled by Taiwan, to the mainland's Fujian coast — have carried more than 27 million passengers since the routes began, including 1.15 million in the first half of this year alone.
ContextA Bigger Travel Story Around It
The cross-strait figures sit inside a larger set of records for China's overall border activity in the first half of 2026. China's border inspection agencies handled 369 million inbound and outbound crossings in H1 2026, up 10.8 percent year-on-year — a record high. Within that total, mainland residents made 176 million cross-border trips, while residents of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan collectively made 147 million crossings, up 8.1 percent year-on-year. Visa-free entries by foreign nationals surged 30.6 percent to surpass 17.8 million, accounting for more than three-quarters of all foreign arrivals.
crossings, H1 2026
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Set against this backdrop, the 3.12 million cross-strait figure represents a small fraction of China's overall travel volume — but its political salience is disproportionate to its size, because it is the one travel statistic Beijing consistently frames as a referendum on Taiwanese sentiment rather than simply a tourism metric.
The FramingWhat Beijing Says the Numbers Prove
The DPP authorities' fabricated claim that the mainland is dangerous has long been disproved by facts.
— Zhu Fenglian, Spokesperson, State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, July 15, 2026
Zhu's framing links the travel data directly to a political argument: that Taiwan's governing DPP has discouraged travel to the mainland by characterising it as unsafe, and that rising trip numbers — especially among young people — demonstrate that ordinary Taiwanese are rejecting that message. She pointed specifically to interest from Taiwan's youth in visiting the mainland for its "vast and magnificent landscapes" and to witness its "rapid economic and technological development," and stated that people on both sides of the strait "share common roots, culture and ancestry."
The Taiwan Affairs Office also used the briefing to reiterate a call for the DPP authorities to lift restrictions on mainland residents travelling to Taiwan, arguing that these restrictions — rather than any mainland policy — are what is holding back a fuller recovery of cross-strait tourism.
The AsymmetryA One-Directional Travel Relationship
- Direction of FlowNearly all of the growth Beijing cites is in Taiwan residents travelling to the mainland — 2.85 million of the 3.12 million total trips. The reverse flow, mainland tourists visiting Taiwan proper, remains blocked by Taiwanese government policy that Beijing itself criticises in the same briefing.
- Limited ReopeningBeijing has specifically promoted resumed travel by Shanghai and Fujian residents to Jinmen and Matsu — Taiwan-controlled islands close to the mainland coast — rather than to Taiwan's main island, where restrictions remain fully in place.
- Policy Ask, Not Just DataThe statement doubles as a direct policy demand: Zhu explicitly urged Taiwan's government to "lift restrictions on mainland residents' visits to Taiwan" — meaning the travel figures are being deployed in service of a specific near-term ask, not offered as neutral statistics.
- Selection EffectsTrip counts capture people who chose to travel; they do not, on their own, establish anything about the views of the roughly 23 million Taiwanese residents who did not make a trip in the period measured, nor distinguish tourism, business, and family-visit motivations from any political statement.
Reading It FairlyWhat the Figures Can and Can't Establish
The travel figures themselves — 3.12 million total trips, 2.85 million of them by Taiwan residents, both drawn from China's National Immigration Administration — are the kind of administrative data that is straightforward to verify and unlikely to be fabricated outright. The growth is real, and it continues a trend visible since 2024, when cumulative Taiwan-to-mainland trips for exchange, study, and tourism purposes passed 11.7 million.
What is less straightforward is the inferential leap from "trip volume rose" to "the DPP's messaging about the mainland has failed" or "the mainstream of Taiwanese public opinion favours closer ties." Trip data reflects, among other things, family ties across the strait, business interests, the relative cost and convenience of mainland travel compared to alternatives, and genuine curiosity about a large, fast-changing neighbour — motivations that coexist quite easily with the security concerns and preference for the political status quo that opinion polling in Taiwan has also, separately, documented over time. The 15th Five-Year Plan's stated goal of building China into a "leading tourism country" and expanding cross-strait tourism cooperation gives Beijing an additional, non-political reason to publicise growing travel numbers: it is also simply promoting an industry policy priority.
What Comes NextA Policy Lever, Not a Plebiscite
Expect Beijing to keep citing rising cross-strait trip numbers as evidence for its broader argument about Taiwanese public opinion, particularly around young people, as part of its ongoing push for expanded "mini three links" access, a full reopening of mainland tourism to Taiwan's main island, and deeper youth exchange programmes under the 2026–2030 tourism development plan. The travel figures will likely keep climbing as post-pandemic-era normalisation continues and as Beijing further eases entry procedures on its own side.
The more consequential variable to watch is whether Taiwan's government under the DPP shifts its own restrictions on mainland visitors — the specific policy ask embedded in the Taiwan Affairs Office's statement. Absent a change there, the relationship will likely remain what it currently is: a travel flow that is large, real, and growing almost entirely in one direction, deployed by Beijing as evidence in an argument about Taiwanese sentiment that the travel data alone cannot fully settle.
The honest reading is that these are two separate facts sitting next to each other — a genuine and sizeable increase in cross-strait travel, and a political argument Beijing has chosen to attach to it. Readers evaluating either claim would do well to keep the two apart.
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