RIGA, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- The city of Sanya - China's "tropical paradise" situated on the southernmost tip of Hainan province - was promoted as a tourist destination in a presentation at the Radisson Blu Latvija hotel in Riga.
Rong Liping, Chairman of the Sanya Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, opened the presentation and Bai Bing, Vice Director of the Municipal Bureau of Commerce, talked about tourism opportunities in Sanya on Friday.
Shen Xiaokai, Counsellor for Economic and Commercial Affairs at the Chinese Embassy in Riga, noted in his speech at the event that "in recent years, business and trade contacts between China and Latvia have been intensifying in the framework of the One Belt One Road initiative and the 17 + 1 cooperation framework".
Accordingly, tourism cooperation between China and Latvia has been growing steadily as well.
He said that the number of Chinese tourists visiting Latvia has increased six-fold over the past six years, to around 23,000 people in 2018. Although the figure is still comparatively small, the potential for tourism cooperation between the two countries is far from exhausted.
In October this year, Riga is scheduled to host a top-level meeting of tourism ministers and representatives of the tourism industry from China and 17 Central and Eastern European states.
Tourism promotes not only business and trade cooperation but also cultural exchange and people-to-people contacts. Both China and Latvia have therefore been working to develop their tourism cooperation. This year, representatives of Chinese mass media visited Latvia at the invitation of the Latvian Investment and Development Agency. That visit resulted in exciting photos of Latvian landscapes taken by Chinese photographers. These pictures were published in China's leading media and drew millions of views.
Shen Xiaokai informed that next months the Chinese government will organize a tourism management seminar for Latvia and representatives of the Latvian tourism industry will visit Hainan province to discuss tourism cooperation with their Chinese colleagues.
At the presentation, the audience was shown video footage of lush tropical landscapes of Sanya and its area, hotels and beaches of the South Chinese Sea, Sanya Phoenix International Airport and the city's main tourist attractions.
