Main Tourist Cities around China

The former China Excellent Tourism Cities program was an administrative quality initiative, not a permanent ranking of the best places for every traveler. It assessed how cities supported tourism through transport, public facilities, services, management and the visitor environment. The historical list below remains useful for understanding how widely tourism infrastructure developed, but the designation alone should not decide a modern itinerary.

Start with the trip you want to make. Beijing and Xi'an suit imperial history and archaeology; Shanghai works as an international gateway with easy rail access to Jiangnan; Guilin and Zhangjiajie focus on dramatic landscapes; Chengdu links food culture, pandas and western Sichuan. Travelers entering through the capital can compare China tours from Beijing, while those landing on the east coast can review routes from Shanghai.

The original inspection framework used many service and management indicators, but standards, city boundaries and administrative labels change. Treat the table as a legacy directory and verify current transport and attraction arrangements separately. For a first multi-city journey, the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed rail itinerary demonstrates a practical two-gateway combination without excessive backtracking.

China Excellent Tourism Cities