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Tao Yan, held a certificate naming her the 25 millionth visitor to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower yesterday. Today marks the 10th anniversary of the tower.

The tower, one of the city's famous landmarks, has become the world's most profitable TV power, with annual incomes exceeding those of The Eiffel Tower. With a brand value of 5.148 billion yuan (US$6.2 billion), the tower was evaluated 96th of the 500 most valuable Chinese brands and one of the top 20 influential Chinese brands in the world for the year 2003 and 2004, according to the World Brand Lab.

Oriental Pearl TV Tower, started construction in 1992, and with 50 million yuan in government funds and a combined 150 million yuan and US$10 million yuan in bank loans from 44 banks, it completed construction and opened to public after two years.

Over the last ten years, the tower has received 295 overseas presidents and leaders and 25 million tourists.

According to statistics, more than three million travelers visited the tower every year, while the figure was 3.3 million for The Eiffel Tower. However, compared with the latter, the Oriental Pearl TV tower was more profitable for its far less operational costs.

With abundant tourism resources and hefty economic returns, Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group went listing in 1994 and raised funds for four times. With a total asset of more than 5.4 billion yuan, the group has boasted four business sections: tourism, media advertising, information transmission and strategy investment. Over the past ten years, the group has reported total revenues of 1.934 billion yuan and profits of 1.135 billion yuan.