Tourism outpaces luxury goods

[Photo provided to China Daily]

And it will benefit from the government's 350 million yuan tourism-development fund over the next five years. The endpoint is to transform the region into the main Silk Road tourism dispatch center by 2020.

About 200 million yuan from the fund will be used for tourism in southern Xinjiang to transform the area into "an ethnic-themed Silk Road tourism destination", Li says.

The government earlier this year subsidized a Xinjiang travel card that cost each traveler 309 yuan. It enabled entrance to more than 40 attractions that could in total cost more than 2,000 yuan.

Tourism to the region had plunged 40 percent between May 2013 and May 2014.

Over 7.2 million domestic travelers toured Xinjiang in 2015's first three months, up 9 percent year-on-year.

Xinjiang received more than a million domestic tourists during 2015's three-day May Day holiday this year, almost 12 percent over the same period of 2014.

The roughly 50 million visits in 2014 represent a nearly 59 percent increase over 2010.

More than 1.5 million overseas travelers, mostly from Kazakhstan and Russia, visited Xinjiang in 2014 and contributed $500 million in local tourism income.

The region expects more than 55 million visits from home and abroad this year.

China's ability to cater to tourists has improved enormously. The country has leapt from 45th to 17th in the World Economic Forum's rankings in just two years, the Telegraph reports.

The WEF also ranks China as the best nation for natural and cultural resources.

Yet with sights set so high, questions of overshooting are yet to be resolved, when targets are hit－or missed.

Not only time, but also travelers, will tell.