Economy

Trawler row 'may hit tourism'

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-24 09:46

A Chinese official on Thursday blamed Japan for the escalating row over a detained Chinese trawler captain and warned it could affect tourism.

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A two-day meeting on tourism ended in the ancient Japanese city of Nara with top officials from the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) reaffirming the importance of tourism in economic growth.

But Zhang Xilong, deputy director general of marketing and international cooperation department of the China National Tourism Administration, told a joint closing news conference that Japan was solely responsible for "very serious problems" between the neighbors, according to Kyodo news agency.

"If this issue is not properly handled and the mistakes not corrected, I'm afraid it will have an even more serious impact on tourism between China and Japan and even to some extent on tourism relations in APEC," he said.