China, US exchange travel boom

China and the United States have become each other's fourth-largest tourist destinations, with nearly 3.5 million tourists traveling between the two countries last year, according to China's top tourism official.

Shao Qiwei, head of China's National Tourism Administration, said on Tuesday that more than 1.36 million Chinese travelers visited the US last year, an annual increase of 17.6 percent. The number of US travelers to China reached more than 2.11 million last year.

"I believe that the number of tourists traveling between China and the US will reach 5 million in 2015," Shao said at the sixth China-US Tourism Leadership Summit held in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, on Tuesday.