Taiwan is scheduled to allow individual tourists from the Chinese mainland to travel to the island in January 2011 — a month earlier than originally planned.

According to a Taiwanese local government official, the new policy will first be applied to business travelers from Shanghai and Beijing, and the minimum number of individual tourists will be one.

The move is expected to boost Taiwan's retail and tourism markets, thus helping to raise the salaries of people in the island and even expand the real estate market.

The local government in Taiwan has said that the number of mainland visitors to Taiwan is expected to reach three million a year over the next three years and will continue to increase.

Taiwan's travel market was opened to group tourists traveling directly from the Chinese mainland in July 2008.