China Receives Over 80 Million Overseas TouristsThe National Tourism Administration disclosed Tuesday that around 83.49 million people from overseas visited China last year, up 14.7 percent over 1999.Sun Gang, vice-director of the administration, said here that some 31.24 million travelers stayed just one night, the world's fifth largest number in this aspect. Tourism income last year exceeded US$16.2 billion, up 15 percent. And domestic tourism income was 317.5 billion yuan (about US$38.1 billion), up 12 percent. Sun said the tourism industry has played an increasingly important role in the national economy in the past few years, and in some places, it has even developed into a pillar industry. China collected about 451.9 billion yuan of income from tourism last year, a year-on-year increase of nearly 13 percent, the official said. |
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