China received 69.5 million inbound visits in the first six months of the year, compared to 62.3 million outbound visits, according to a National Tourism Administration report.
In 2016, the number of inbound visitors reached 138 million, a historical high since the international financial crisis of 2008 and an increase of 3.5 percent over the previous year.
Income from international tourism grew 5.6 percent to $120 billion in the same period.
This figure suggests the country's inbound tourism market has stepped out of its post-financial crisis depression and entered a new phase of sustainable growth, according to the administration.
People from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan make up the mainstay of visitors, while South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Myanmar, the US, Russia, Mongolia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore are the top 10 sources of foreign travelers to China.
More than 60 percent of inbound travelers spend between $1,000 to 5,000 during their trips to China on average, and the number of visitors from the countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative are actively rising, according to the report.
Ctrip and a Confucius Institute subsidiary called the Chinese Testing International Company plan to jointly develop more Sinology-related trips and arrange for overseas people who study the Chinese language to travel in China.
To date, the Confucius Institute subsidiary has served 6 million Chinese language test participants and 100 million Chinese language learners, while Ctrip has 25 million foreign users.
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