China approves tour group to US

Chinese travel agencies will be allowed from next year to organize tour groups to the United States, which gained the Chinese government's approved destination status on Tuesday.

The agreement was announced at the 18th Sino-US Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade and is expected to be implemented in the spring of 2008, which could see about 580,000 Chinese visitors to the US annually by 2011.

Tourism cooperation between two nations is developing rapidly. The number of US visitors to China reached 1.7 million last year, up 10 percent from 2005. The memorandum followed the declaration signed by China and the United States to launch formal negotiations to facilitate Chinese group leisure travel to the United States during the second Strategic Economic Dialogue meeting held in Washington in May.

The Chinese government has given the status to 132 nations and regions and more than 34 million Chinese traveled abroad last year.

Editor:Xiong Qu