Visitors will likely be impressed upon arrival by the cleanness and beauty of Boao Town, where the annual Conference of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) is currently being held.

People may have stereotyped thoughts about small Chinese towns, imagining them with cement roads and buildings covered with old-fashioned ceramic tiles. However, Boao, a coastal town in southernmost island province of Hainan, differs from other towns in China

Boao, a tiny, quiet, and scenic island in the southernmost part of China, has been the permanent site of the Annual Conference of the Forum since 2002. Great efforts have been made to build the town into a base for public diplomacy, said Mao Chaofeng, executive vice governor of Hainan Province, at a press conference hosted by the provincial government on March 23 during the BFA Annual Conference 2016.

Not limiting itself to Boao, Hainan will also build 100 towns with special industries and 1,000 beautiful villages with favorable environments for business, residence, and tourism in the next five years.

Hainan also wants to become a supplier of medical tourism by establishing the Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone. The zone, the first of its kind in China, was approved by the State Council in 2013. Infrastructure construction work in the zone began in August last year; to date, one international medical tourism center has been completed and another 19 projects related to plastic surgery, Botox, and anti-aging are currently under construction. These 20 projects will be put into use gradually over the next two years.

The medical tourism zone will be built into a world-class medical tourism destination as well as a gathering place for high-end talents in the medical sector, with annual revenue hitting 50 billion yuan. By 2024, the number of tourists to the medical zone should account for more than 5% of the total overnight tourist arrivals in the province.

Hainan's tourism sector has achieved rapid growth. In the past five years, Hainan has received over 200 million tourist visits, with an average annual growth of 11.7 percent, and its tourism revenues have totaled 221.074 billion yuan, with an average annual growth of 16.1 percent. The tourism sector created 372,800 jobs directly and helped contribute to about 1.4 million indirect jobs, according to statistics released on the press conference show.

Hainan has invested about 282 billion yuan in infrastructure construction. On Dec. 30, 2015, the west-line high-speed railway, which goes around the island, was completed and opened to traffic, closing the loop of the worlds' first circular bullet train system.

The Boao Airport, with a total investment of about 1.13 billion yuan, was put into operation on March 17, after a construction cycle of less than 10 months, marking a new world record in the speed of airport construction. The press center for the BFA, with a total investment of 110 million yuan, was completed within 150 days, half of the regular time usually required for such a project. The center covers 4,158 square meters and can accommodate 2,500 people. Mao said the rapid completion of the Boao Airport and the press center demonstrated the service efficiency of the provincial government.

Hainan has consistently given top priority to environmental protection by following a green development approach. An afforestation area of 106,000 hectares has been added in the province, with the forest coverage rate reaching 62%. By improving the environment, Hainan hopes to attract more visitors from home and abroad, said Mao.

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