"China now leads the world in having the largest number of forest parks and the country's forest tourism industry is developing rapidly. Last year some 300 million visitors came to our forests and this represented a third of all tourists in the country," said Wang Weizheng, director of the Forest Tour Office with the State Forestry Administration. He was speaking at the recent 2004 China Forest Tour Exposition held in Baoji City, Shaanxi Province.

China has a vast territory with many varied types of scenery. Going from south to north, travelers can pass through tropical, subtropical, warm temperate, temperate and cold temperate zones. And going from east to west there are plains, hills, tablelands, plateaus and mountains as high as 8,000 meters. All this rich geographical variety means there are many different natural forest environments to be enjoyed, each with its own natural beauty.

Director Wang recalls that various forestry and related departments started developing the forest parks and associated natural resources back in the 1980s and the popularity of the forest tour has been going from strength to strength ever since. So far, China has established 1,658 forest parks covering 19 million hectares together with 1,757 nature reserves with a further 150 million hectares. Meanwhile, China has also set up many small nature reserves, hunting grounds and safari parks.

For twenty years the forest ecological tour has maintained its rapid growth in popularity. Back in 1992 direct revenues, mostly from ticket sales, topped 100 million yuan (US$12 million) for the first time. By 2003 this had grown to 5 billion yuan (US$600 million). Taking all types of forest tours together and including the various nature reserves, hunting grounds, forestry scenic areas and tourist regions, visitor numbers came to some 300 million last year.

The rapid and sustained development of the forest tour market has acted as a catalyst promoting the development of a whole series of related industries such as transportation, catering, processing, animal husbandry, planting, and retailing. It has brought a new prosperity to local economies enabling many residents to leave poverty behind them and become comfortably well off.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, June 12, 2004)