2025 is the final year of the "14th Five-Year Plan" and a key year for the full implementation of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions on tourism work. The tourism system should clarify its thinking and priorities, coordinate efforts, and ensure implementation around the goal of building a strong tourism country in the new era, promoting high-quality and sustainable development of the tourism industry.

Building a strong tourism country must adhere to the development path with Chinese characteristics. In leading and promoting the practice of Chinese-style modernization, the Communist Party of China has always adhered to starting from China's national conditions, exploring and forming a correct path that suits China's realities. Since the reform and opening up, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's tourism development has entered the fast lane. The key lies in fully and deeply integrating the tourism industry into the national development strategy. In China, tourism is not only a new strategic pillar industry, but also a people's livelihood industry and a happiness industry with significant characteristics of the times; tourism is not only a component of the national economy, but also a vivid manifestation of the people's sense of gain and happiness; tourism is not only an important vehicle for inheriting and carrying forward Chinese culture, but also a key area for implementing the concept of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets"; tourism is not only a tool for achieving rural revitalization and common prosperity, but also an important channel for promoting exchanges and integration among ethnic groups. China has explored a unique path of tourism development with Chinese characteristics through implementing a moderately forward-looking development strategy, focusing on the combination of a capable government and an effective market, dynamically adjusting the positioning of the tourism industry, achieving a combination of gradual reform and managed opening up, promoting the deep integration of culture and tourism, emphasizing regional complementary and coordinated development, achieving dual circulation between domestic and international markets, and attaching importance to new productive forces.

Building a strong tourism country must fully, accurately, and comprehensively implement the new development philosophy. Fully, accurately, and comprehensively implementing the new development philosophy is the only way for China's development and growth in the new era. Building a strong tourism country requires always using the internal unity of innovation, coordination, green development, openness, and sharing to grasp, measure, and promote the development of the tourism industry. Innovation is the primary driving force. In the current and future period, China's tourism development must implement innovation-driven development, comprehensively improving development quality and industrial efficiency through integrated innovation. To this end, we must pay attention to institutional innovation, policy innovation, and governance innovation at the government level, as well as to innovation in concepts, technology, products, management, processes, services, and marketing at the enterprise and social levels. Coordination is both a means and a goal of development, as well as an evaluation standard. The tourism industry must achieve coordinated development in terms of supply and demand, speed and quality, scale and efficiency, urban and rural areas, and economic and social benefits, and play a greater role in promoting coordinated regional development, urban-rural coordinated development, coordinated development of material civilization and spiritual civilization, and harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. Green development is a necessary condition for sustainable development. The tourism industry must fully implement Xi Jinping's ecological civilization thought, accelerate the development of resource-saving, environmentally friendly, and ecologically shared tourism, and achieve green, circular, and low-carbon development. Openness is the only way for national prosperity and development. The tourism industry has an inherent openness and should fully play its role as a link and bridge in national diplomacy and foreign opening-up and cooperation, deepen tourism exchanges and cooperation, improve the level of opening up, and form a new pattern of tourism opening up that is mutually beneficial, win-win, and multi-faceted and balanced. The essence of the concept of sharing is to adhere to the development philosophy that puts people first. We must take the realization of people's aspirations for a better life as the starting point and the ultimate goal of developing the tourism industry, adhere to mass participation and universal sharing, and enable the tourism industry to play a greater role in promoting the all-round development of people and the common prosperity of all people.

Building a strong tourism country must properly coordinate five pairs of relationships. The tourism industry is highly comprehensive and interconnected, and its development requires handling various complex relationships. The most crucial aspect is to coordinate government and market, supply and demand, protection and development, domestic and international, and development and security. Regarding the relationship between government and market, "government leadership" has been the main model for China's tourism development for a considerable period of time. With the continuous improvement of the socialist market economic system, the benign interaction between a capable government and an effective market has become increasingly important. In tourism development, it is necessary to give full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation, while also strengthening the government's functions in planning, optimizing layout, and providing public services. Dynamic balance between supply and demand is the key to industrial development and economic growth. Currently, tourism demand has shifted from "whether there is" to "how good it is," with diversification, personalization, and quality becoming prominent features. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously create diversified and high-quality tourism products and services to achieve a high-level dynamic balance of "demand driving supply and supply creating demand." Rich cultural resources and precious natural resources are important foundations for the development of the tourism industry. In the process of tourism development, it is necessary to adhere to cultural leadership and ecological priority, integrating cultural connotations into the entire process of tourism development, and to establish the concept of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," promoting harmonious coexistence between humans and nature through tourism development. Domestic tourism, inbound tourism, and outbound tourism together constitute the market foundation of the tourism industry. In the current and future period, we must strengthen and improve the domestic tourism market, better meet the needs of people's better lives by continuously enriching and improving tourism supply, and promote high-level opening up to promote the development of inbound and outbound tourism, continuously enhancing China's tourism competitiveness and influence. With increasingly fierce international competition, China's tourism industry must maintain a certain development speed, scale, and quality; at the same time, in the face of a complex international situation, we must also pay close attention to safety issues in tourism development and pay attention to preventing and resolving various risks.

Building a strong tourism country must focus on improving the modern tourism industry system. Having a tourism industry system that is complete, innovative, advanced, and integrated is a prerequisite for building a strong tourism country. The tourism industry must improve its industrial chain, promote industrial innovation, promote industrial integration, promote industrial upgrading, and expand industrial opening up in order to build an industrial system that meets modern industrial standards. To this end, based on the existing foundation, it is necessary to continuously strengthen, supplement, and extend the chain according to changes in consumption patterns and industrial development needs, forming a complete tourism industry chain; it is necessary to accelerate the implementation of an innovation-driven development strategy, guiding and encouraging industrial innovation in terms of systems, policies, mechanisms, funds, and talent; it is necessary to continuously deepen integrated development, expanding the paths of integration with culture, sports, agriculture, industry, transportation, and science and technology, achieving multi-point breakthroughs, integrated interaction, and cross-border development of the industrial pattern; it is necessary to actively promote the deep integration of tourism innovation chains, industrial chains, capital chains, and talent chains, accelerating the development of the tourism industrial structure towards rationality and high-level development.

Building a strong tourism country must rely on high-quality development. High-quality development is the primary task in comprehensively building a socialist modern country. The tourism industry needs to transform its development logic and methods, shifting from focusing on quantitative growth to focusing on quality improvement, from emphasizing scale expansion to highlighting structural upgrading, from relying on factor-driven development to implementing innovation-driven development, and from relying on large-scale projects and hard development to focusing on lean investment and soft development, thereby achieving "higher quality, higher efficiency, greater equity, and greater sustainability." To this end, it is necessary to accelerate the formation of a policy system conducive to promoting high-quality development of the tourism industry, combining quantitative policies with qualitative policies; to form a modern market system where enterprises operate independently and compete fairly, consumers have freedom of choice and autonomous consumption, and goods and factors flow freely and exchange equally; to establish a statistical system, standard system, and performance evaluation system that focuses on improving the quality of the tourism industry and tourism services; to strengthen supply-side structural reform and demand-side management, continuously optimizing supply, expanding demand, improving services, and strengthening management, comprehensively improving the industrial efficiency and international competitiveness of China's tourism industry.

Building a strong tourism nation requires fulfilling five major missions. The missions entrusted to the tourism industry by the state have varied across different historical periods and stages of development. At the beginning of reform and opening up, China's tourism development mainly highlighted the functions of economic development and opening to the outside world. Since the beginning of the new century, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the role of tourism in meeting people's needs, strengthening cultural construction, and enhancing the national image has become more prominent. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized, "Let the tourism industry better serve a better life, promote economic development, build a spiritual home, showcase China's image, and promote cultural exchanges." This is a highly summarized description of the new mission of tourism development and is also a core requirement for future development directions. China's tourism development should focus on people-centeredness, making tourism an important vehicle for meeting the needs of a better life for the people, allowing people to appreciate the beauty of nature, culture, and the soul; it should focus on promoting economic development, giving full play to the role of tourism in stimulating consumption, expanding investment, meeting demand, and driving employment; it should focus on spiritual civilization construction, enriching people's spiritual and cultural lives through tourism, promoting the all-round development of people, and at the same time enhancing the cohesion of the Chinese nation, providing strong spiritual motivation for realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation; it should focus on showcasing China's image, vigorously developing inbound tourism, allowing overseas people to personally experience China's splendid culture and beautiful mountains and rivers, and see China's rapid development and better life with their own eyes, thus understanding a credible, lovely, and respectable China; it should focus on promoting cultural exchanges, promoting mutual understanding between different countries and cultures through tourism exchanges and cooperation, thus deepening cooperation, seeking win-win results, and building a world of lasting peace, universal security, common prosperity, openness, inclusiveness, and a clean and beautiful environment.

From a global perspective, the changes of the century are accelerating, the international situation is complex and volatile, global economic growth is slowing down, tourism in various countries is gradually recovering, and the competitive landscape is undergoing profound adjustments. For China, which possesses the world's largest domestic tourism market and is the largest source of international tourists and a major destination, how to plan tourism development is an important issue with both contemporary significance and global influence. From China's perspective, the transition from a tourism powerhouse to a strong tourism nation is the goal of China's tourism industry. With the steady growth of the national economy, the role of tourism in promoting consumption, improving people's livelihood, promoting national exchanges and integration, implementing the Belt and Road Initiative, and promoting cultural exchanges and mutual learning is becoming increasingly prominent. Under this background, we should, with firm belief, systematic planning, and more solid work, accelerate the construction of a strong tourism nation and contribute the strength of tourism to achieving the two centenary goals.