| Tourism of China |
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| Sunday,March 22,2009 Posted: 18:46 BJT(46 GMT) |
| From:Mofcom Article type:Reproduced |
In 2007, the number of inbound tourists to China totaled 131.87 million, a year-on-year rise of 5.5 percent. Of this total, 26.11 million were foreigners, up 17.6 percent; and 105.76 million were Chinese compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, up 2.9 percent. Of all the inbound tourists, overnight visitors counted 54.72 million, up 9.6 percent. Foreign exchange earnings from international tourism topped $41.9 billion, up 23.5 percent. The number of outbound visitors from China totaled 40.95 million, up 18.6 percent. Of this total, 34.92 million were on private visits, a year-on-year rise of 21.3 percent, or 85.3 percent of all outgoing visitors. The year 2007 saw 1.61 billion domestic tourists, up 15.5 percent. The revenue from domestic tourism totaled 777.1 billion yuan, up 24.7 percent.
China maintained its status as the fourth largest tourist destination in the world and the largest tourist source country in Asia in 2007.
The industrialization of the country’s tourism made steady progress. In 2007, 264 tourism development fund projects were arranged, and the country’s tourism industry created 500,000 new jobs.
Regulation of the tourism market made some progress in 2007. Campaigns were launched to crack down on false bids, misleading advertisements, forced consumption, price abuses and other activities that severely disturbed the market order. As a result, a batch of unlicensed tourist agencies and individuals were exposed and punished. Through these efforts, some long-standing problems that disturbed tourist market order and prevented tourism from developing healthily were initially resolved.
The credit system building in the tourism industry was further promoted. Demonstration tourism units were created, construction of tourism information data bank was strengthened and the accountability system for travel agencies was built.
More overseas tourist destinations were approved for Chinese citizens. There are 134 countries and regions on the list, among which 91 have actually received Chinese tourists. In 2007, Chinese and U.S. governments signed a memorandum of understanding on Chinese tourists visiting the United States. Hence, the United States formally became a tourist destination for group tourists from China.
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Bilateral Visits
