Taipei: A Taiwanese business group on Monday urged the government to "ease or lift" restrictions in response to a slate of tourism and commercial measures announced by China. At a news conference in Taipei, Paul Hsu, chairman of the General Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of China (ROCCOC), emphasized that both the government and the opposition should not be influenced by "partisan and noneconomic considerations." According to Focus Taiwan, Beijing announced a list of 10 Taiwan-focused measures on April 12, two days after opposition Kuomintang (KMT) Chairperson Cheng Li-wun met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. The measures include the resumption of individual travel by residents of Shanghai and Fujian to Taiwan, the "full normalization" of direct cross-strait passenger flights, and expanded access for Taiwanese agricultural, fishery, and food products to the Chinese market. Amid calls from Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) for industry "not to echo the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or allo w themselves to be used as tools to pressure the government," Hsu stated that none of the chamber's members had faced pressure from China. He added that the government "should not use any means to prevent us from speaking," noting that the chamber received "phone calls" ahead of Monday's event. Hsu, flanked by representatives from the tourism, food, and transportation sectors, reiterated his call for the government to ease restrictions, asserting that the move would benefit both businesses and the public. He also urged Chinese authorities not to abruptly suspend the new measures for "political reasons." Stephanie Chang, vice president of the Hotel Association of the R.O.C., mentioned that reopening to Chinese tourists could increase Taiwan's hotel occupancy rate, currently around 50 percent, by at least 15 percentage points. She highlighted that around 3 million Chinese visitors arrived annually when cross-strait tourism-now largely suspended-was at its peak. In a statement on Sunday, MAC described China's measures as aimed at bypassing government authority and labeled them as a "political deal" between the CCP and the KMT. It added that the policies "could not genuinely safeguard the interests of industries or the well-being of the public," warning that similar measures in the past had been introduced and suspended for political reasons, creating uncertainty and harming Taiwanese businesses.