Almost 90 million tourists -- a designation that includes visitors from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao -- visited the Chinese mainland from January to October this year, a year-on-year rise of over 20 percent, said the National Tourism Administration (NTA) Tuesday.

Fewer than 14 million were foreigners, up 52.7 percent over the same time last year and 400,000 more than the whole year of 2002 when the number hit an annual record high, the NTA said.

Tourism of the Chinese mainland earned US$19.26 billion in the ten months, 1.85 billion more than the whole year of 2003, the administration said.

In October the visits totaled 9.88 million, a rise of 15.58 percent over the same time of last year.

Last year China's tourism suffered a slump as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) ravaged the country in the spring.

(Xinhua News Agency December 9, 2004)