The opening of an office in Taipei by the Beijing-based Cross-Strait Tourism Association (CSTA) marks a new milestone in tourist exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, China's top travel administrator said Friday. 'The inauguration of the CSTA office in Taipei is a landmark event in the development of our tourism exchanges, ' said Shao Qiwei, director of China's National Tourism Administration who concurrently serves as CSTA president. Shao, who arrived in Taipei earlier in the day to preside over the inauguration of CSTA's Taipei office -- the first office of any kind established by China in Taiwan -- said Beijing will seriously study the feasibility of allowing Chinese citizens to travel on their own to Taiwan. At present, Chinese citizens can only make group tours of Taiwan. Local tour operators have expressed hope that China will lift the restriction. Shao was the first Chinese official to suggest that Beijing might allow citizens to visit Taiwan individually, a local tourist official said. In his speech, Shao also guaranteed that the number of Chinese tourist arrivals will break the 1 million mark this year. Moreover, he went on, China will allow residents in Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang to make sightseeing trips to Taiwan, bringing the total number of its provinces and regions eligible to send tourists to Taiwan to 31. Chinese nationals have made more than 1.07 visits to Taiwan since the two sides formally signed an agreement on tourist exchanges in July 2008. The number of Chinese arrivals has reached 416,000 so far this year, 95 percent higher than during the same period last year. Under the agreement signed between the two quasi-official intermediary bodies -- Taiwan's Straits Exchange Foundation and China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait -- Taiwan allows entry of up to 3,000 Chinese tourists per day. But the number of daily arrivals has already averaged 3,219 this year. Shao said if the total arrivals break the 1 million mark this year, the two sides will discuss an increase in the daily quota. On Tuesday, the CSTA's Taiwanese counterpart -- the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association (TSTA) -- also opened a representative office in Beijing to promote travel in Taiwan to potential Chinese tourists. The exchange of offices of the two organizations is expected to offer cross- strait travelers more and better services, said Janice Lai, director-general of Taiwan's Tourism Bureau who also attended the CSTA office opening ceremony held at Grand Hotel. The two associations serve as quasi-official intermediary bodies to handle cross-strait tourist exchanges in the absence of official ties. 