INDIA was holding roadshows in China last week in a bid to draw more tourists.

Indian Tourism Minister K.J. Alphons, who spoke at a promotional event in Beijing on Aug. 28, said India hopes that at least 14 million Chinese tourists will visit the country over the course of the next five years.

China leads the global outbound tourism market, with 144 million people traveling abroad annually. But despite being neighbors, India still receives very few tourists from China compared to the numbers visiting from the United States, Britain and other Western countries.

Some 240,000 Chinese tourists traveled to India in 2017. The figure was 1.37 million for visitors from the United States.

India will also set up a tourism office in Beijing, Alphons said.

India registered 10.18 million foreign tourist arrivals last year, an increase of more than 15 percent over the previous year.

Earlier some Chinese media reports said that India would need to further develop its tourism infrastructure to attract Chinese people to travel there in larger numbers.

Alphons said India is building four- and six-lane roads around the so-called Buddhist circuit — a network of temples designed to attract tourists from China and other parts of Asia. It will take a couple of years to complete the highways, he added.

Other than for sightseeing, Chinese people also visit India for medical tourism. (Xinhua)