{"id":353,"date":"2017-02-18T18:55:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-18T18:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.74.50.173\/2017\/02\/china-counting-on-high-speed-rail-to.html"},"modified":"2017-10-15T13:22:55","modified_gmt":"2017-10-15T13:22:55","slug":"china-counting-on-high-speed-rail-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/2017\/02\/china-counting-on-high-speed-rail-to.html","title":{"rendered":"China counting on high speed rail to drive domestic tourism to about 10% of GDP"},"content":{"rendered":"
China Daily describes the case for how high speed rail is boosting economic growth in China.<\/a><\/p>\n Faster trains with efficient services can expand and improve the Chinese tourism industry, which saw a year-on-year growth of 15.9 percent, totaling 423.3 billion yuan ($61.78 billion) during the recently ended Spring Festival holiday week. Plus, the high-speed railway has opened up hitherto remote places to tourists, expanding business opportunities.<\/p>\n In 2016, the domestic tourism sector’s revenue reached 3.9 trillion yuan, equivalent to more than 5 percent of the country’s GDP. And in South China’s Guangdong province, the tourism revenue was equivalent to nearly 15 percent of the provincial GDP.<\/p>\n China’s economic development has always had a geographical dimension. Since the 1980s, its economic growth was led by large-scale development and opening-up of certain cities – the special economic zones in Shenzhen in the 1980s, Pudong (Shanghai) in the 1990s, and Chongqing, which was brought under direct central government administration, in the 2000s.<\/p>\n China’s high-speed railway network will continue to expand in 2017, helping distant cities to form economic ties with their more advanced counterparts, and proximate cities to form their own economic clusters.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \nChina\u2019s tourism industry will emerge as an economic powerhouse contributing 10.5 per cent to the GDP by 2020, according<\/a> to a report released by China national tourism administration in mid-2016. Tourists spending will rise to a colossal US$1.22 trillion from about $500 billion in just five years, it said.<\/p>\n While that is a huge figure, it is not unfeasible given the domestic tourism industry has grown at an average 22.4 per cent per year since 1985 when it was a mere $1.3bn, the administration said in its China Tourism Development Report, which was released at the four-day First World Conference on Tourism for Development, which will end in Beijing tomorrow.<\/p>\n Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) reported that China\u2019s business travel market has overtaken the United States as the world\u2019s biggest. Chinese spending in this segment came to $291.2bn, just topping US spending of $290.2bn in 2015.<\/p>\n “China surpassing the United States in business travel spending marks a major inflection point and truly demonstrates the global nature of today\u2019s economy,” said Michael McCormick, the GBTA executive director.<\/p>\n The US is likely to fall further behind this year as Chinese business travel spend is expected to grow 10.1 per cent to $320.7bn compared with 1.9 per cent growth in the US, which will notch up $295.7bn, the GBTA said.<\/p> It predicted a 9.8 per cent growth in Chinese business travel in 2017. China business travel is dominated by domestic travel, which accounts for 95 per cent of total business travel spending.<\/p>\n Tourism and related sectors last year employed 79.1 million people, accounting for 10.2 per cent of the country\u2019s total working population.<\/p>\n