Tourist arrivals in China's Macao Special Administrative Region made a new monthly record in August, registering 1.27 million, according to official tallies Wednesday.

Figures issued by the Macao Statistics and Census Services Wednesday suggested a 14 percent increase over the July counting of tourists.

The sharp increase was attributed to an influx of tourists from China's mainland in the summer vacation season, which rose by 51.4percent over that in July.

The tourist boom in summer has considerably mended the loss in Macao's tourist industry, which was bitterly affected by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in its neighboring regions in the first half year. The total number of tourist arrivals in the first eight months fell only 2.9 percent over the same period of last year.
 

(People's Daily September 25, 2003)