China's domestic travel hits record highs in 2025: official

During the nine-day Spring Festival holiday from Feb. 15 to 23, the country recorded 596 million domestic trips, with tourism spending surpassing 800 billion yuan (about 115.93 billion U.S. dollars), both setting new records, Sun told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the national legislature.

For the full year of 2025, domestic trips by Chinese residents exceeded 6.5 billion, up more than 16 percent year on year, with tourism expenditure reaching 6.3 trillion yuan, an increase of 9.5 percent -- setting new records in both volume and spending, Sun added.

Sun said the culture and tourism sectors will formulate and implement the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for cultural and tourism development, which will be aligned with the country's overall development strategies.

This will help better harness the sectors' role in enriching people intellectually and emotionally while empowering economic and social development, said the minister.

Earlier, it was reported rhe output value of China's artificial intelligence (AI) sector reached 1.2 trillion yuan ($165.78 billion) in 2025, with more than 6,200 companies operating in the field.