Contentious cruising: China's Paracel Islands tourism is about more than travel
Image: Collected
They're known for clear aquamarine waters, stretches of soft beaches ... and political intrigue.
Welcome to the Paracel Islands.
After an 11-month suspension due to the pandemic, China's cruise lines have set sail again. And, with the Covid-19 outbreak largely in order, the primary cruises to resume businesses in the region are going to among the world's most hotly disputed areas.
Two Chinese cruise ships have been back service since December 9, jogging from Sanya, a port city in southern Hainan province, to the Paracel Islands -- which the Chinese call Xisha -- an archipelago in the disputed South China Ocean that Beijing offers laid territorial lay claim to.
Six other governments in the region, including Vietnam and the Philippines, also lay claim to at least elements of this vast swath of water, which contains the world's busiest shipping lanes and keeps rich natural resources.
Recently, the Chinese government has generated several artificial islands in the region, equipping them with complex armed service installations, despite opposition from different claimants in addition to the United States.
The Paracel Islands, in the northwestern the main South China Sea, contain 130 small coral islands and reefs. China offers occupied all of the area's Islands since 1974, in line with the CIA Factbook.
Cruises to the hawaiian islands have already been operating on a modest scale since 2013 -- hitting a good peak of one weekly -- until January 2020, when the coronavirus broke out found in China, taking the global cruise market to a halt.
Zhou Mingqi, founder of T-identifier think container, a Shanghai-based tourism consultancy, said the Chinese are keen travelers and, after certainly not being able to travelling internationally for such a long time, they're itching to be on vacation once again. The rare usage of the Islands -- advertised as "China's Maldives" -- adds to the appeal of the destination.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com
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