More than 174,000 Chinese mainland tourists visited Taiwan from July last year through early April, the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Li Weiyi said here Wednesday.

Of those, 67 percent, or more than 117,000 mainlanders, traveled to Taiwan in the first four months this year.

The daily number of mainland visitors to the island via organized trips reached about 3,000 at the end of March, he said. That number soared to more than 4,000 on April 7.

"Despite the spreading global financial crisis, mainland tourists' enthusiasm toward Taiwan visits has seen no signs of ebbing," Li said.

"The number of mainland visitors to Taiwan will remain high in the foreseeable future, as 113 newly-accredited travel agencies, which are allowed to sell Taiwan tours on the mainland, have just begun organizing trips to the island."

Li said mainland tourism authorities would take measures to ensure a "healthy and orderly" development of tourism to Taiwan, and would ask mainlanders to abide by local regulations while visiting the island.

The Chinese mainland and Taiwan agreed to allow mainland tourist groups to travel to the island after a meeting between the mainland's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits chairman Chen Yunlin and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation chairman Chiang Pin-kun in June last year. The first tourist group arrived in Taiwan July 4.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2009)