Vacationers go to the Narat scenic space in Xinyuan County, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Area, Could 19, 2023. (Xinhua/Hao Zhao)

URUMQI, Nov. 24 (Xinhua) — The opening ceremony of the Shanghai Cooperation Group (SCO) Discussion board “12 months of Tourism 2023” was held on Friday in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Area.

The discussion board will run till Sunday, bringing collectively heads of tourism administrations, representatives of worldwide organizations and tourism companies, and specialists within the subject of tourism from SCO member states and different nations.

“The discussion board goals to offer a broad platform for folks to debate points associated to the event of tourism inside the SCO, and actively search cooperation choices on this respect,” mentioned Zhang Ming, secretary-general of the SCO. Zhang mentioned that the SCO covers a big space with nice tourism potential, and nations ought to create favorable situations for the event of the tourism trade.

The 12 months 2023 was declared “the SCO 12 months of tourism” by the SCO member states, aiming to help the tourism trade and enhance the enchantment of SCO cities and areas to vacationers.

“Kazakhstan attaches particular significance to the great cooperation inside the SCO, and in 2022, over half of the overseas vacationers in Kazakhstan had been from SCO member nations,” mentioned Yerzhan Malikovich Erkinbaev, Kazakhstan’s deputy minister of tourism and sports activities.

Discussion board contributors will likely be invited to go to Kashgar, Altay, Aksu and Urumqi in Xinjiang.

Since its inception in Shanghai in 2001, the SCO has expanded from a company with six members into a company with 9 full members, three observer nations and 14 dialogue companions, masking over 60 % of the Eurasian landmass and practically half of the world’s inhabitants.

(Internet editor: Zhang Wenjie, Liu Ning)