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21 May, 2017

Chinese visitors flock to Philippines after bilateral ties are reset

Beijing (People’s Daily Online)  May 19, 2017 – The number of Chinese people applying for visas to travel to the Philippine recently shot up by 200 percent, as the Chinese government canceled all travel alerts for citizens going to the country, according to Philippine news site Inquirer.net on May 18.

With a booming tourism industry and an increasing number of business travelers, China currently has enormous demand for Philippines visas. The latter is projected to receive 1 million Chinese tourists in 2017, according to the Philippines ambassador to China, Jose Santiago Sta. Romana.

The number of Chinese tourists in the Philippines was about 675,663 in 2016, up 37.65 percent from the year before. That number rose by 25.42 percent year on year during the first two months of 2017.

The ambassador said that Chinese people preferred travel in other Southeast Asian countries to travel in the Philippines when the relationship between the two countries was tense.

However, the situation has turned more positive these days, the ambassador added, as Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has adopted a new foreign policy toward China, and tried to establish friendly bilateral ties.