The number of overseas tourists to the Chinese mainland grew by 18.2 percent in January on an annual basis, with a 11.4-percent rise in revenue, the State Tourism Administration said Friday.

China received 6.45 million overseas travelers in January, including 650,000 foreigners. In the first month since the return of Macao to China, tourists from Macao reached 990,000, a surge of41.4 percent year on year.

Stay-over tourists increased by 17 percent to hit 2.3 million in January, with most of them from Macao.

The overseas travelers brought the tourism industry a total revenue of 1.14 billion U.S. dollars in January. Foreign tourists spent 440 million dollars, up more than 30 percent from the same period last year.

Compared with January last year, the number of overseas travelers from the five continents all had a double-digit growth, with Asia and Oceania leading the other three.

The number of tourists from Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Russia and Australia all grew by more than 20 percent in January, while that from the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany rose by less than 10 percent.