Shao Qiwei, director general of China National Tourism Administration, said that 34 million Chinese citizens went abroad for outbound trips last year, ranking first in Asia.

Shao issued the statistics during the National Tourism Conference 2007 in Jinan.

Last year, China remained the fourth largest inbound travel destination and the largest domestic travel market in the world. China received 124 million inbound tourists: 49.6 million of them stayed overnight and 22 million of them were foreigners.

Inbound travel created foreign exchange of US$33.5 billion, which was an increase of 14% over the previous year. With 1.39 billion domestic tourists, China made RMB620 billion in income, up 17%.