China pledges another three years of ‘toilet revolution’ to boost tourism

China has been keen to devel­op and expand ser­vices indus­tries to move away from debt-fueled and invest­ment-driv­en growth, while off­set­ing the impact of per­sist­ently weak glob­al demand for its exports.

Par­tic­u­larly, it has been look­ing at the emer­ging tour­ism industry, pledging late last year 2 tril­lion yuan ($290 bil­lion) in invest­ment which it hopes will help lift the sec­tor’s con­tri­bu­tion to annu­al eco­nom­ic growth.

While three years of “toi­let revolu­tion” have led to “sig­ni­fic­ant achieve­ments”, accord­ing to the China Nation­al Tour­ism Admin­is­tra­tion (CNTA), the boom­ing industry’s pro­spects are clouded by wide-spread com­plaints about toi­let hygiene levels at Chin­a’s tour­ist sites.

Since 2015, China has poured 1.04 bil­lion yuan into build­ing and renov­at­ing 68,000 toi­lets, far exceed­ing its three-year goal of 57,000, state news agency Xin­hua said.

“The toi­let revolu­tion … is an urgent and neces­sary meas­ure to trans­form and upgrade our tour­ism industry,” CNTA dir­ect­or Li Jin­zao was quoted by Xin­hua as saying.

Under the new ini­ti­at­ive, China will have 47,000 toi­lets built and 17,000 exist­ing ones refur­bished in the next three years, Xin­hua said.

($1 = 6.6245 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Source: The Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reuters.

Fea­tured image: Pub­lic toi­lets in Tonghua, China by Domin­ic Rivard (CC BY-ND 2.0). Uploaded 2005 onto Flickr.