WTA Chair ZHANG Xu Attends 2025 Inner Mongolia Cultural and Tourism Development Thematic Event

On the evening of June 22, 2025, the 2025 Inner Mongolia Cultural and Tourism Development Thematic Event opened in Baotou. DING Xiufeng, Member of the Standing Committee of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Party Committee, Secretary of the Baotou Municipal Party Committee, and Vice Chair of the Autonomous Regional People’s Congress, delivered a speech, while YANG Jin, Vice Chair of the Autonomous Regional People’s Government, attended the event. Mr. ZHANG Xu, Chair of the World Tourism Alliance (WTA), was invited to attend and address the opening ceremony.

In his speech, Mr. ZHANG Xu noted that Inner Mongolia boasts a long history, profound culture, and magnificent landscapes. In recent years, under the strong leadership of the Autonomous Regional Party Committee and government, Inner Mongolia’s tourism sector has achieved remarkable progress in infrastructure and business development, seasonal tourism product differentiation, and the revitalization of ethnic cultural experiences. Currently, Inner Mongolia is committed to becoming a vital “bridgehead” for China’s opening-up to the north, actively promoting cultural and tourism exchanges and cooperation with Russia and Mongolia, and vigorously advancing the construction of the Manzhouli Border Tourism Pilot Zone.
As an international tourism organization initiated by China with 259 members from 45 countries and regions, the WTA is willing to leverage its platform advantages to support the high-quality development of Inner Mongolia’s cultural and tourism industries. It aims to help broaden the region’s international cooperation channels, particularly with countries and regions along the “Belt and Road”, enhance the global influence of the “Journey to Inner Mongolia: Where Song Meets the Steppe” tourism brand, and attract visitors from around the world to fulfill “My Date with the Grasslands”.

With the theme of “A New Chapter for the Grasslands, A New Future for Cultural Tourism,” the event was designed to implement the Autonomous Regional Party Committee and government’s strategic plans for accelerating the high-quality development of cultural tourism. It pooled collective expertise to embed culture within tourism experiences and showcase heritage through travel, fostering deeper, broader, and more meaningful culture-tourism integration. The goal is to establish new heights of innovative integration, revitalize cultural tourism, and enhance tourism competitiveness. During the opening ceremony, the first batch of Inner Mongolia’s Top Tourism Counties were announced and officially recognized. Additionally, new tourism products such as “Self-Driving Across the Grasslands, Living the Inner Mongolia Dream” and the Integrated Development Action Plan for “Culture, Tourism, Sports, Commerce, Trade, and Agriculture” were released, showcasing a new landscape of multi-industry convergence and development.