Zhuhai, the nearest interior city to Macao, received 4.25 million tourists from January to September.

According to local tourism authorities, the figure went up by 2. 5 percent over the same period last year. Tourists from overseas made up 740,000, up 13 percent from 1998. The tourism boom is attributed to Macao's return to the motherland on December 20 this year.

Zhuhai is one of China's earliest special economic ones. The three other economic zones are the cities of Shenzhen and Shantou in south China's Guangdong Province and the city of Xiamen in eastern Fujian Province.

Pan Xinglian, director of the Zhuhai Tourism Administration, pledged to work in still closet cooperation with the tourism community of Macao after the latter's return to the motherland and explore the vast tourism potentials in both Macao and Zhuhai.