"China will come up with new tour packages to attract more Japanese tourists," Sun Gang, deputy director of China's National Tourism Administration, said at the China-Japan Culture and Tourism Forum held Saturday in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province.
 
The forum was held to evaluate declining tourism cooperation between the two countries.
 
At the forum, officials and professionals from the Chinese and Japanese tourism sectors discussed how to expand the scale of visits between the two peoples and exchanged views on specific cooperation options.
 
Among the tourists to China, the number of Japanese tourists to China was 3.39 million, an increase of only 1.7 percent over 2004.
 
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates World War II criminals, have been highlighted by Chinese authorities as one of the factors influencing the drop in personnel exchanges.
 
2006 has been earmarked as a year of China-Japan tourism exchange. Chinese tourism departments at various levels have plans to organize more than sixty events ranging from cultural activities to photo exhibitions, Sun said.
 
Tourism heads from China, Japan and the Republic of Korea will also meet in July in Japan to discuss further tourism cooperation, Sun said.
 
(Xinhua News Agency May 15, 2006)