Southwest China's Yunnan Province recorded more than 400,000 cross-border passenger trips during the five-day May Day holiday from May 1 to 5, as tourism demand along the province's borders surged, local border authorities said.
According to the Yunnan Border Inspection General Station, the province handled 403,300 cross-border passenger trips during the holiday, up 16.86 percent year on year.
The Hekou border gate on the China-Vietnam border saw an early peak on April 30, with the arrival of 267 inbound tour groups totaling 4,484 people.
"This is our graduation trip. We really love Chinese culture and food," said Phuong Linh, a Vietnamese traveler.
As cross-border tourism continues to develop, Vietnamese visitors are increasingly moving beyond day trips to border towns and venturing further into inland China. Meanwhile, travelers from Laos and Thailand prefer to enter through gates such as Mohan port to visit Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, a popular tourist destination in southern Yunnan.
During the five-day holiday, Xishuangbanna recorded an average of 14,000 cross-border passengers per day, with significant growth in both routine border crossings and tourism travels.
"We have set up visa-free counters, multilingual service windows and temporary entry permit zones to support the high-quality development of cross-border travel and trade," said Wang Long, an officer at the Xishuangbanna Border Inspection Station.
Yunnan Province logs over 400,000 cross-border passenger trips during May Day holiday
China's development has never been a "threat" to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Friday.
Some Western media and think tanks are peddling so-called "China Shock 2.0," saying that "China is achieving fast development in high-tech sectors such as renewable energy and AI and relies on foreign markets to absorb its overcapacity, thus reducing the market share of developed countries and sending more serious shock waves to the global economy compared with the era of traditional manufacture industry," while there are foreign commentators saying that the "China Shock 2.0" argument ignores the genuine innovation occurring within the Chinese industrial ecosystem and that Chinese export is the exact booster of the global economy that is needed in the turbulent period and more indispensable than ever.
Commenting on that, Lin said: "From the world's factory to the world's market and innovation powerhouse, China's development is achieved through strong performance driven by innovation and brings tangible cooperation opportunities and space to the world. High-quality Chinese products represented by the 'old three' of textiles, furniture and home appliances have stabilized the global industrial and supply chain, lowered the living cost of global consumers and eased the inflationary pressure worldwide. China's green production capacity represented by the 'new three' of electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels has bridged the gap between supply and demand in global green development and bolstered the global energy transition and low-carbon development. Moreover, China's high-tech products represented by the 'new new three' of robots, AI and innovative drugs have broken high-tech barriers and monopoly and enabled people in more countries to access affordable new technologies," said the spokesman.
"Openness and cooperation bring about progress and win-win result. China's development has never been a 'threat' to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries. What really creates 'shocks' to the world has never been the innovation of Chinese companies and efficiency of Chinese industrial capacity, but protectionist moves of setting up barriers, decoupling and severing industrial and supply chains. China will stay committed to high-standard opening up, defend the multilateral trading system and provide more certainty and new impetus to the world economy with its own steady development," said Lin.
China's development never a threat: FM spokesman
