Taipei - Taiwan on Thursday reluctantly approved a charity fund-raising visit by China's basketball star Yao Ming, but limited his visit to only three days due to strained Taipei-Beijing ties. At the second meeting to review Yao's application to visit Taiwan, the Mainland Affairs Council and the National Immigration Agency approved his visit, but set conditions.
That is Yao must visit Taiwan as a sports person, cannot raise funds and can stay only from September 7-10.
Yao will be accompanied on the trip by his agent and five members from the Chinese Basketball Management Centre.
The Chinese-Taipei Basketball Association is contacting the Chinese Basketball Management Centre to arrange Yao's itinerary in Taiwan.
Yao, who has visited Taiwan twice to play in international games, said he was very happy to be able to visit Taiwan again.
"Yao Ming said he is very happy. He said he has visited Taiwan before, but now he is more well-known, so this visit will be different and he is very happy," Wang Jen-sheng, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese-Taipei Basketball Association, quoted Yao as saying.
Yao, 26 and 226 centimetres tall, is the centre for the NBA's Houston's Rockets.
He applied to visit Taiwan September 1-7 as the charity ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). He was scheduled to attend a fund-raising lunch with Taiwan hi-tech executives to raise 200,000 US dollars for Taiwan's charity groups.
But at the first review meeting, authorities rejected his application, fearing China wanted to use Yao as a propaganda tool to persuade Taiwan to accept the Olympic torch relay arrangement.
Last month China unveiled the relay route for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Under the plan, the torch would come to Taipei from Vietnam's Ho Chi Min City and go from Taipei to Hong Kong and Macau, the former British and Portuguese colonies which are now part of China.
Taiwan rejected the arrangement saying it is aimed at making Taiwan a domestic leg on the relay. Taiwan demanded the torch go from Taipei to a third country, like South Korea, before entering China, thus making Taiwan a stop on the international leg of the torch relay.
Taiwan and China are still negotiating the torch relay.
China sees Taiwan as its breakaway province but Taiwan claims it is a sovereign country.
Taiwan bars mainlanders from visiting the island, but allows visit by invited Chinese delegations and individuals to visit Taiwan for cross-Strait exchanges.
