KINGSTON, Jamaica · China agreed Wednesday to allow Chinese tour groups to visit 10 more Caribbean nations that share diplomatic relations with the communist giant. Only Cuba had the coveted designation until now. The status should boost tourist arrivals as booming China emerges as the No. 4 source of outbound travelers by 2020, according to World Tourism Organization forecasts. China Vice President Zeng Qinghong announced the designations on the opening day of the first China-Caribbean business forum, a four-day event that has attracted more than 1,000 executives to the Jamaican capital from across the Caribbean and China. The lure of Chinese tour groups is expected to encourage more Caribbean nations to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing and break ties with China's political rival of Taiwan, just as Grenada switched sides last month, conference delegates said. "It's a question of gravity pulling toward China," said Clodomiro Ortiz, a tourism official from the Dominican Republic, one of the few Caribbean nations still linked with Taipei and one that would welcome Chinese visitors at its casinos. The meetings come as China matures into a global powerhouse. Its economy has averaged 9 percent growth for 26 years and is forecast to triple again by 2020, trailing only the United States in a generation and topping the United States by 2040 by some estimates. Last year, China became only the third nation in the world to top $1 trillion in annual trade in goods. Direct China-Caribbean trade jumped more than 35 percent to roughly $2 billion in 2004, Chinese government data shows. Small nations in the tourism-dependent Caribbean hope to tap the soaring market of the world's most populated nation and also, lure more Chinese investment. Jamaica Prime Minister P.J. Patterson joked he would be happy to attract only "0.001 percent" of China's 1.3 billion residents to his country. If that happened, China would gladly build hotels in Jamaica to handle the influx, China's Zheng replied. China already is teaming up with communist-led Cuba on hotel projects. A joint venture between the two nations is now constructing a 750-room, tropical-themed hotel in Shanghai and is developing a hotel in Havana, said Cuban official Ricardo Cabrisas. Still, attracting big numbers of Chinese tourists to the Caribbean may take time. Last year, China sent about 28 million people abroad, up about 40 percent from 2003 and more travelers than Japan sent overseas. Of those, only about 7,000 visited the distant Caribbean, with most preferring closer sites in Asia, China tourism leaders said. One hurdle to business has been the lack of Beijing's "Approved Destination Status," which permits Chinese tour groups to more easily obtain Chinese visas for select countries. At the end of last year, 61 nations had the designation: 30 in Europe, 18 in Asia, 10 in Africa, two in Oceania and only Cuba in the Americas, said Gu Zhaoxi, vice chairman of the China National Tourism Administration. That obstacle will dissolve, however, as the designation is extended to 10 more Caribbean nations: Antigua-Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Suriname and Trinidad-Tobago, officials said. The conference and expo cap a five-nation tour by China's vice president and a roughly 120-member delegation, which already has included stops in Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and Trinidad-Tobago. While some analysts have seen China's push into the Caribbean and Latin America as encroaching into the U.S. back yard, Zheng made it clear that China's growing ties with fellow developing nations don't preclude friendships with others. "This forum is not targeted against any third country," Zheng told a news conference late Tuesday, in an obvious reference to the United States. China-Caribbean business meetings in Jamaica continue through Saturday. Reprinted from sun-sentinel.com