Chinese tourists check their camera as they visit a park in Kuala Lumpur. China has consolidated its position as the Asia leader in outbound tourism, with 28.6 million Chinese travelling overseas in the first 10 months of the year, state media has said. [AFP/File]

In the past five years, China has been fulfilling or has fulfilled, its tourism sector promises in accordance with WTO requirements.

They include allowing foreign capital to open wholly-owned hotels and restaurants, allowing foreign capital to hold major shares in travel agencies, and open wholly-funded travel agencies.

There are now 49 overseas hotel brands and 25 foreign-funded travel agencies in China.

Foreign-funded travel agencies are allowed to run inbound tours, but are not permitted to organize outbound tours yet.

Next year, China will allow foreign-funded travel agencies to set up branches and lower the registry capital demand for foreign travel agencies to the same level as domestic ones.

The administration also mentioned on the website that China has a huge domestic travel market.

At least 1.21 billion person-times of Chinese travelled within the country last year, an increase of 53 per cent over 2001.

(China Daily 12/14/2006 page2)

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