Experts from China and Japan gathered in Beijing Saturday to express their common confidence of restoring Japan as China's biggest tourism source nation and strengthening bilateral partnership.

Japan's largest travel agency JTB organized the conference to promote the recovery of China's tourism, which has suffered due to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

In order to create a safe, healthy and civilized environment for tourists in Beijing, certain regulations were put in place in areas such as hotels, travel agencies and restaurants, said Wen Ziji, deputy director of the Beijing Tourism Bureau.

In recent years, the number of Japanese outbound tourists increased slowly, but those to China grew steadily, reaching a historical peak in 2002. However, from April to June this year, due to SARS, tourists to China decreased by more than 90 percent over the same period of the previous year.

When the SARS threat diminished, business travel was restored quickly, but in order to make tourism travel recover more rapidly, the two sides should put more efforts into promotion, said Toshio Matsugu, member of the board of JTB.

Though the booming tourism exchanges between Japan and China faces severe challenges, the Chinese government took a positive attitude toward the SARS and achieved final success much earlier than experts predicted, said Akio Kambara, standing member of the board of JTB.

He believed that tourism exchanges would continue to develop rapidly and in a stable way.

Matsugu noted that people from both countries have learned from SARS, so upcoming activities, such as 2004 Shanghai International Tourism Exposition, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, will bring bilateral tourism exchanges to a new height.

Since the beginning of this century, Japanese tourists have accounted for about 20 percent of China's total inbound tourists. JTB alone sent approximately 300,000 visitors to China each year. Meanwhile, more and more Chinese people are also choosing to travel to Japan.

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