Recently, heads of tourism departments of the member states of Shanghai Cooperation Organization attended a conference online and offline. They discussed the tourism cooperation of the SCO against the background of the pandemic. The conference was hosted by the Tourism and Development Committee of Tajikistan which was the rotating Chairman. Attendees were member states of SCO, deputy general secretary of the SCO and representatives of tourism departments of observer states, UNWTO and WTCF.

    Zhang Xu, vice minister of culture and tourism of China, attended the video conference. He said that currently, Chinese citizens was more willing to travel and to shop during trips. China’s tourism market was at a turning point of full recovery. China was willing to work closely with tourism departments of every country, including those of the SCO, to share China’s plan and experience of tourism to cope with the pandemic. Chinese government also carried out the call to “build a humanistic community” brought up by Xi Jinping in the SCO summit 2020.

    Zhang Xu suggested that we needed to do the following to promote the tourism cooperation of SCO after the pandemic. The first was to offer driving force for tourism and to find a new direction for cooperation. The second was to deepen the coordination between different places and to expand new cooperation space. The third was to promote the integrated development between tourism and cooperation and to enrich the content of cooperation. China was willing to have more cooperation and to push the SCO to overcome the difficulties of the pandemic in the field of tourism cooperation, so as to support the recovery of international tourism.

    All attendees had a close study of the tourism condition of SCO member states and measures to stimulate the development potential of tourism. They decided that they would offer help and support to overcome the negative influence of the pandemic on tourism of every country. They passed the conference news announcement as well as signed the minutes and the “The Joint Action Plan to Implement ‘The Tourism Cooperation Development Outline for Member States of SCO’ from 2022 to 2023”.