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The coastal city of Dalian, in northeast China's Liaoning province, aims to receive 550,000 tourists from overseas this year, bringing in 363 million US dollars in foreign exchange.

The city aims to register more than 16 billion yuan (1.93 billion US dollars) in total tourism income, including that brought by domestic tourists, this year.

The total tourism income is expected to be 18.5 percent more than that for 2002 and account for about 10 percent of Dalian's annual GDP.

To promote the growth of the tourism industry, the National Tourism Administration will kick off a program to select the best tourist cities in China on Feb. 24. Dalian is among the 138 prestigious tourism cities which will compete for the "most ideal tourism city" title for nine Chinese cities.

Dalian is expected to invest heavily in its tourism industry this year, according to the city tourism bureau. Construction on 32 tourism projects will begin with some to be completed within the year.

Dalian hosted 490,000 overseas tourists in 2002, taking 330 million US dollars in foreign exchange. The city's total tourism income was 13.5 billion yuan (1.63 billion US dollars) for last year, a rise of 22 percent over the previous year.