Telegraph blog makes suggestions on where you could go for a holiday during the long NPC period.
The National People’s Congress is enough to make anyone want to go on holiday, and the Party Secretaries of China’s two prime tourist destinations had their minds on hills and beaches today.
Both were saying they wanted to make their provinces – Yunnan in the south-west and the “holiday island” of Hainan in the south-east prime locations for foreign tourists. Why were they not up there in the package market with Thailand and Bali, they wondered…
Though I often encourage people who are on standard tours of China to branch out for Yunnan and Sichuan, particularly if they are reasonably adventurous, I’m not sure Bai and Wei should even think of trying to attract many more foreign tourists. Mr Wei said that 18 million Chinese tourists visited Hainan last year, and only 750,000 foreign ones, and is that such a bad thing? After all, China hardly needs the tourist dollar at the moment, and getting Chinese to spend more money is where the economic targets are.
