China's domestic tourism market has become the world's largest measured by tourist numbers, a senior Chinese tourist official said.

Shao Qiwei, director of the State Tourism Administration, made the remarks on Thursday at the Henan provincial tourism convention in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province.

The number of Chinese tourists traveling nationwide reached 1.1 billion last year, 27 percent more than the previous year, Shao said, adding tourism revenue topped 471.1 billion yuan (approximately 58 billion US dollars), a year-on-year rise of 37 percent.

About 28.85 million Chinese people traveled overseas last year. In the first eight months this year, the number of outbound tourists totaled 20.46 million, a year-on-year increase of 10 percent. It is estimated that the number of outbound Chinese tourists will reach 50 million by 2010, Shao said.

As for inbound tourists, China received 41.8 million overseas tourists who spent at least one night on the Chinese mainland last year, ranking fourth in the world. Tourism revenue hit 25.7 billion US dollars, up a whopping 48 percent on 2003, ranking seventh in the world.

Tourist arrivals to China in the first eight months of this year came to 30.89 million, up by 15 percent over last year's same period.

These factors make China one of the world's major tourism markets, Shao said.

About 6.49 million people worked in the tourism sector in China in 2003, and the number is expected to increase by more than 500,000 annually over the next five years, Shao said.

Source: Xinhua