The Asean-China Centre (ACC) has pledged to make efforts to make China the largest or second-largest source of visitors to Cambodia, positions occupied by Vietnam and South Korea last year.
ACC secretary general Ma Mingqiang said Tourism Minister Thong Khon that the number of Chinese visitors go Cambodia was "still small" but that plans were underway for Chinese-languages booklets and the establishment of "quality shopping stores".
During their meeting in Phnom Penh on Monday, the secretary general of the Beijing-based centre also stressed that Chinese visitors knew only about the Angkor Wat temples and not Cambodia in general.
Tong Khon told Ma that Cambodia received only 240,000 Chinese visitors in 2011, making China the fourth largest source of visitors after Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. Despite the existence of direct flights from China, arrivals were still "limited", he reportedly said.
The minister recently said that Cambodia expects to have at least one million Chinese tourists by 2020 by which time China is expected to have 100 million tourists a year.
