Kaiping Watchtowers (Click to view more pictures)

FIFTY tourist sites have been chosen as the "Top 50 Chinese Destinations for Foreigners," according to the results of a public poll Saturday (Apr 8).

The Forbidden City in Beijing was listed as No. 1. Shaanxi, Jiangxi and Xinjiang had the most number of sites.

Guangdong's Kaiping, which is famous for its watchtowers, was the only location from the province on the list. Hong Kong ranked 15th and Taiwan's Sun Moon Lake 19th.

Questions have been raised about the poll with some well-known tourist sites not listed, such as two world heritage sites - the Potala Palace in Tibet and the old town of Lijiang in Southwest China's Yunnan Province. West Lake in East China's Zhejiang Province was also excluded.

Jointly conducted by Beijing-based Global Travel newspaper and 31 metropolitan newspapers, the poll started in early March and collected about 2 million online responses, 28,000 paper votes and 213,000 text messages.

Wu Fei, secretary general of the poll's organizing committee, said about 170 sites in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities were listed for voting.

"All sites had passed preliminary appraisal by local metropolitan newspapers," Wu said.

The views of the organizing committee, which comprised professionals in the travel industry and diplomats from 13 embassies in Beijing, also affected the final outcome.

The organizing committee would not comment on why some famous sites were excluded, only saying that the results reflected the views of voters and were "valuable references to foreign tourists."

According to the China National Tourism Administration, China received 120 million overseas visitors in 2005 and earnings from international travelers surpassed US$29.3 billion.

Editor: Wing