China, already the world's fifth most popular tourist destination, plans to be the global leader by 2020. China's current ranking in world tourism demonstrates its status as a major tourism destination. The development of China's tourism industry constitutes an important part in the country's process of building a well-off society.

          China's total income from tourism is predicted to reach 600 billion yuan (US$75 billion) in 2003, up 8.5 percent from 2002. The goal for 2003 is to receive 100 million inbound tourists, including 14 million foreigners. The income from foreign tourism is expected to reach US$21.5 billion. Domestic travelers will number 900 million, with domestic tourism generating an income of 425 billion yuan (US$53 billion). Chinese tourism professionals believed these results are both the start-up points and a solid foundation for China to build itself as a world-class tourism destination. China's tourist infrastructure construction development and management have seen all-round improvement during the past 20 years. The latest statistics show that by the end of 2001, China had put 780 billion yuan into tourism fixed assets investment and had 288,000 tourism enterprises, 274,000 hotels and inns, and more than 10,000 travel services. China has issued 17 sets of tourism industry standards, achieving fruitful results in tourism standardization.

          Tourism has become a new niche of growth for the Chinese economy. The total tourism related income brings an average annual growth of 12 percent, or five percentage points higher than the GDP growth of the same period. China's tourism earns 499.5 billion yuan, or 5.2 percent of China's GDP. The foreign currency earning is expected to hit 20 billion US dollars. China is expected to earn 30 billion US dollars from tourism in five years.

          The holiday economy, initiated by China, has become a booster of China's tourism industry. Last year in the three "seven-day vacations" for the Chinese New Year, May Day and National Day, China's domestic travelers reached 200 million. The tourist income during these periods was 73.6 billion yuan. The holiday tourism gave an injection into the accommodation, transportation, shopping and catering industries, generating shopping sprees and driving the domestic demand. Out-bound traveling has become a must for the Chinese people in their well-to-do life.

         The industry also played an active role in promoting the sustained economic, social and environmental development, job creation and poverty alleviation. Experts estimate that the labor-intensive tourism industry has created 35 million direct or indirect job opportunities in the past 10 years in China.

         More importantly, China's tourism has become an integral part of world tourism. According to the estimation of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), China will become the world's largest host country and the fourth largest to send tourists abroad by 2020. In this year alone, about 10 million Chinese will spend 18 billion US dollars traveling to other Asian destinations. In the year 2020, Chinese outbound travelers are expected to reach 100 million, a figure equal to the outbound travelers of all other Asian destinations combined.

         China still lags behind the current world-class tourist destinations, such as Britain, France and the United States, Sun said, adding that the development of its rich tourism resources, the management of tourism enterprises and promotion still remain low.
 

Class I: 292 agencies such as:

• CITS (China International Travel Service);
• CTS (China Travel Service);
• CYTS (China Youth Travel Service).

Class II: 748 agencies;
Class III: Over 3,000 agencies.