On September 24, 2025, Dai Bin, President of the China Tourism Research Institute, was invited to attend the second UAE China Think Tank Forum hosted by the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in China, and delivered a keynote speech on "Humanity, Culture, and Knowledge - Soft Power and Human Capital Investment". Dai Bin pointed out that by 2024, the scale of bilateral tourism between China and Arab countries will exceed 860000 people. Although there is still room for improvement in the total number, in terms of per capita ratio, about 6 out of every 10000 Chinese citizens travel to the United Arab Emirates each year, and about 13 out of every 10000 UAE citizens come to China for tourism. In the context of being remote destinations to each other, the tourism exchange activity between China and Arab countries is not low, demonstrating good development potential.

Dai Bin emphasized that both China and Arab countries have a profound historical and cultural heritage, an unyielding national spirit, and cherish tradition while being brave enough to create the future. We hope that both sides can further strengthen exchanges and discussions on tourism development planning on the basis of political mutual trust and economic and trade cooperation, with a focus on promoting interaction among young people and formulating youth friendly tourism promotion policies. We hope that with the joint efforts of both China and Arab countries, the scale of bilateral tourism visits will double or even break through in the next five years, and better play the role of tourism as a bridge in promoting people to people exchanges between China and Arab countries.

Contribution | International (Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) Research Institute

Editor in Chief | Liu Xin

Source | China Tourism Research Institute (Data Center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism)

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