Statistics show that the outbound travel expenditure of Chinese citizens in 2005 stood at 235 million US dollars. The average of 987 US dollars ranks the first in the world.

According to reports from World Travel &Tourism Council, China has become one of the world top five tourists source and will sooner or later become world's biggest one.

Global Refund survey conducted from September 2004 to September 2005 shows that Chinese travelers spent 60 million US dollars in Germany, followed by Italy, Britain, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland.

According to forecast from World Tourism Organization, number of outbound Chinese travelers will exceed 100 million 15 years later.

World Tourism Company's Asian customers were mainly from Japan in the1970's, but now China has replaced Japan to become Asia's largest outbound tourist market.

As one of the countries with largest foreign reserve, China gradually loosed control on foreign exchange purchase quota. In 2002, the quota of foreign exchange purchase for private traveling was 2000 US dollars, three years later, the quota increased to 6000 US dollars.

By People's Daily Online