Deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations have taken a significant toll on the travel industry, with the number of Japanese visits to the Chinese mainland in
2013 dropping 18.2 per cent year-on-year, according to official data released Friday.
Overseas travellers made 129 million trips to China last year, a fall of 2.5 per cent, due to the sluggish world economic recovery. But the drop in Japanese tourists, about 641,000 fewer visits, is one of the most serious, statistics from the National Tourism Administration (NTA) showed.
Wu Wenxue, deputy director of the administration, admitted at a press conference in Beijing that the spat between China and Japan had apparently hurt the number of Japanese tourists, the second largest foreign tourist market for China.
The figures going the other way were not pleasing either. Chinese people made 11 per cent fewer trips to Japan year-on-year during the first 11 months of last year, according to official Japanese data.
The two countries have seen cooling economic exchanges since the Japanese government announced in September 2012 that it would “nationalize” the disputed Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The struggling ties saw another setback in late December 2013 after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.
In contrast, Chinese travellers made a total of 98.2 million overseas trips last year, a jump of 18 per cent from a year earlier, thanks to continuing economic growth above 7.5 per cent and the strong yuan.
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