From October 13^th to 14^th, the 2021 China-ASEAN International Forum on Traditional Medicine and Health Tourism was held in Bama Yao Autonomous County of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. It’s organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the government of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Zhang Xu, vice minister of culture and tourism, and Li Bin, vice chairman of Guangxi, attended the opening ceremony of the forum.

    Zhang Xu said in his speech that China and ASEAN were each others’ important tourism-generating region and destination. The outbreak of the Covid-19 in the world sent shock to the world tourism, including that in China and ASEAN. China’s successful fighting against the pandemic proved that traditional Chinese medicine had an important role to play in the fighting against the pandemic. Against such background, it’s significant for China and ASEAN to discuss the improvement of the cooperation for traditional Chinese medicine and health tourism; the integrated development of traditional Chinese medicine and tourism as well as the enhancement of people’s health in every country. China would like to improve the international tourism cooperation between China and ASEAN with regular pandemic prevention and control and push forward the integrated development of traditional Chinese culture and tourism, so as to improve the China-ASEAN health tourism cooperation mechanism.

    The theme of the forum was “the integrated development of traditional Chinese medicine and tourism with regular pandemic prevention and control”. At the opening ceremony, video speeches were given by Huang Luqi, vice director of National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Sandiage Uno, Indonesia’s Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy, Bounfeng Phoummalaysith, minister of health of Laos, and Sopon Mekthon, vice minister of public health of Thailand.