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China freezes
price hikes of admission tickets to tourist spots
The Chinese government has staged a national overhaul to axe
overcharging in the admission tickets for tourist sites, banning
further price rises in the coming 12 months and vowing to open
most public museums, memorials and patriotic educational sites for
free in two years.
The campaign began on April 9 and was
made public Tuesday by the National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC), the top economic planner in charge of pricing,
ahead of the international Labor Day holiday on May 1.
It will last through a summer tourism
boom which industry analysts foresaw from an influx of tourists
around the August Beijing Olympics and the growing habits of
having annual vacations on home turf.
During the year-long overhaul, tourist
sites are prohibited from charging more for either entrance or for
transport such as cable cars, sight-seeing vehicles or yachts,
said a NDRC statement with endorsement from seven other
ministerial departments.
Tourism expert Wu Jiaoli with China's
top online travel operator Ctrip recognized the move as
"positive in reducing consumers' trip costs". But the
statement's vague wording on what should be categorized as
"overcharge" and how to measure the pricecuts have made
her reluctant to gauge the move's efficacy on boosting the tourism
industry.
As China embraces a market economy and
relies on market forces for pricing, tourist sites, especially
cultural relics and scenic spots, are among the few exceptions
that will still have their prices set by governmental departments.
Only a small fraction of
artificially-developed cultural landscapes are allowed to be
priced by investors or operators.
Chinese regulations have commissioned
provincial economic planners to price for tourist sites but laid
out only rough principles on the pricing criteria.
Significant cultural relics, large
museums and renowned scenic spots and nature reserves, for
instance, could be charged higher in principle to prevent
depletive consumption. City parks, memorials and exhibitions
closely relating to residents' daily life should be priced lower
with "full consideration" of the public's financial
power.
Researcher Wen Guifang of the Institute of Finance and Trade
Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences maintained the
government was justified in reserving its pricing power for
tourist sites as the "caretakers of the legacies of nature
and ancestors".
"Such public resources should not
be run for profits but be tapped as affordable public services
accessible to all Chinese," he said.
To crack down on profiteering, the NDRC
has forbidden the malpractice by tourist sites of charging extra
to give juicy kickback. The discount rate for entrance fees to
traveling tours has been capped at 20 percent while the
preferential treatment should not go beyond the officially
designated group of people which include children, students,
minors, senior citizens aged 65 or above, the enlisted, the
disabled and religious personage.
The document also required provincial
price monitoring departments to take back their pricing rights
from lower branches over "significant tourism sites",
which analysts applauded as "a belated move to ease public
grumbles over expensive scenic spots".
An ironic phenomenon pointed out by Wen
Guifang is that significant tourism sites such as ancient
mausoleums, famous mountains and nature reserves are often in less
developed central and western interiors and function as a crucial
source of local financial revenue.
To cash in on the resources,
financial-strained local governments preferred to farm them out
and were forced to walk the tight rope of considering both
contractors' need for profits and the residents' right of easy
access to public resources.
"This has triggered a ferocious
competition of price rises, and goes against the justified
intention of optimizing public services," Wen said.
Taking a glimpse of the quoted prices
for prestigious scenic spots from the China Youth Travel Service
for instance, one will spot a unanimous spike for peak-season
admission fees, with Jiuzhaigou resort in Sichuan charging 310
yuan (44.34 U.S. dollars) and Lushan Mountain 200 yuan, a rise of
45 yuan to 150 yuan respectively from the off-season.
Compared to the 1,149 yuan average
monthly disposable income for urban dwellers and the 349 yuan for
rural residents last year, such admission charges remain
forbiddingly high.
Wen recognized that the overhaul came
after the NDRC released a detailed pricing method last February
amid public grumbles over costly tourist sites.
Under that method issued to all
provincial-level price monitoring departments, the NDRC has
ordered governmental departments to alert the public of their
price rise intentions at least two months in advance and banned
tourist site management from using admission fee income to
bankroll pay rises, bonus and other benefits distribution for
employees.
Entrance charge should be raised at
least every three years, it said.
NDRC spokesman Li Pumin warned Tuesday
at the press conference violating governmental departments would
face punishment in line with the Price Law.
But analysts said a long-term cure to
the problem is to upgrade current fiscal system to make sure local
finance is wealthy enough to deal with local capital input demand
and simultaneously strengthen the supervision of the expenditure
of transfer payment from central government.
Researcher Wen Guifang said the
campaign had "negligible impact" on easing consumer
inflation because tourism is light-weighted in the Consumer Price
Index which eased to 8.3 percent in March from a nearly 12-year
high of 8.7 percent in February.
"Accommodating and transportation
account for the largest share of tourism expenditure. Admission
charges are just negligible," he said. (1 U.S. dollar equals
6.99 yuan)
2008-04-29
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