Nearly 30 million Chinese travelled abroad in the first nine months of the year, up 17 percent as against the same period of last year, a tourist official said in Kunming on Tuesday.

The figure indicates that China remains Asia's largest source of outbound tourists, according to Zhu Shanzhong, a tourism promotion official with the China National Tourism Administration.

Addressing a press conference held on the sidelines of an ongoing tourist trade fair in this capital city of southwest China's Yunnan Province, Zhu said the growth rate of outbound Chinese tourists has outpaced the average world level.

He said among all the outbound tourists during the period, 25.52 million traveled for personal purposes and 4.44 million for business, accounting for 85 percent and 15 percent respectively of the total.

The number of outbound travelers from the Chinese mainland was 34.52 million last year, with Hong Kong, Macao, Japan, Thailand, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Russia, the United States, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia their top destinations.

China has so far approved 132 countries and regions as destinations for outbound tourists.

The country hosted more than 22.21 million travelers from other countries in 2006, up 9.65 percent year-on-year, according to official figures.

The top 10 source countries of inbound travelers to the mainland were the ROK, Japan, Russia, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Mongolia, Thailand, Britain and Australia.

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2007)