China is expected to open up 14 million hectares of land to ecological tourism by 2005, the English-language newspaper China Daily said Tuesday.

Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the administration, said the number of forest parks is expected to total 1,450 in three years' time.

Zhu made the remarks at the opening ceremony of China's first Forest Scenery Resources Exposition and Tianmu Mountain Forest Tourism Festival.

The event began on Saturday in Lin'an, a city some 90 kilometers west of Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, and will end tomorrow.

Zhu said he was confident that 100 key well-known forest parks, including national nature reserves, will be ready to receive 150 million visitors every year and generate 60 billion yuan (about US$ 7.2 billion) for the sustainable development of China's forestry resources.

Since 1982, China has set up 1,200 forest parks, covering 10 Million hectares of land. Of these, 379 parks have been listed as State level, giving them much better protection and a higher level of management.

Last year, more than 100 million tourists visited China's forest parks and nature reserves. They provided 50 billion yuan in tourist income, up 25 percent over the previous year, the paper said.

( Xinhua News Agency June 11, 2002)