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In what appears to be the clearest sign yet that the coronavirus outbreak has subsided in China, where it emerged late last year, millions of Chinese travel within the country for the May Day holiday.
More than 50 million trips were made in the first two days of the five-day vacation, according to state media reports, adding that approximately 90 million trips are expected to be completed by the end of the vacation on Tuesday. Of the 50 million trips, almost Friday, the first day of the holiday, 23 million domestic tourist trips were made, and national tourism revenue reached more than 9.7 billion yuan (about $ 1.38 billion), according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT).
The increase in domestic tourism comes after China reduced its epidemic emergency response to the second or lower category of the most severe.
A total of 8,498 A-level tourist attractions across the country were opened to the public on Friday, covering about 70 percent of the total, the ministry said.
The increase in tourism comes in the context of a dramatic drop in Covid-19 cases in China, including Hubei province, which was once the most affected, and its capital city, Wuhan, where the virus first emerged time at the end of last year.
The Chinese health authority said Sunday it received reports of two new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in mainland China on Saturday, including one imported case.
As of Saturday, overall confirmed cases on the continent reached 82,877 and a total of 4,633 people had died of the disease, the National Health Commission (NHC) said.
However, the authorities maintain a limit on the number of tourists, generally around 30 percent, in many tourist places.
By marking this significant trend for the nation, China’s major cities appear to be leading the rise in tourism
After Beijing moved to announce that it would reduce the public health emergency response from level one to second starting April 30, flight reservations increased.
The ruling Communist Party of China (CCP) hopes that increasing domestic tourism is one of the first steps in boosting the economy, which contracted year after year for the first time in more than four decades in the first quarter of 2020..
Despite the increase in tourism over the weekend, it is still much lower than the corresponding volumes for other years: both volume and revenue are expected to contract despite an additional day of vacation this year.
“China experienced 195 million tourist trips during the four-day vacation that ended Saturday, a 13.7 percent year-over-year increase, according to the MCT. The rise in travelers boosted tourism revenue to nearly 117.67 billion yuan ( $ 17.5 billion) across the country, a 16.1 percent increase from last year, “the state-controlled China Daily reported in 2019.
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