SANYA /China/, December 6. /TASS/. The administrative center of the southern Chinese province of Hainan, the city of Haikou, and the resort city of Sanya, located in the south of the island, were included in China’s top three cities for health tourism, the Sanya Daily newspaper reported.
According to the newspaper, the list of 100 cities is based on the research results of a group of scientists lead by the head of the Hubei University Tourism Development Research Institute (Hubei Province, Central China) and researcher of the China Tourism Academy Ma Yong. As the article notes, the scientists based their work on the study of data regarding the development of the tourism industry, as well as on the socio-economic development of cities in China for 2019-2020. A special index, which took into account four key factors: the environmental conditions for health tourism, the health situation, the city's economic development, and the conditions for health tourism development, was derived to compile the ranking.
Hainan’s Haikou topped the list, followed by Chongqing in the southwest of China and Hainan’s Sanya is in third place. The fourth line in the ranking is Beijing.
In October of this year, the city of Sanya was also named the annual symbol of healthy China for the 2019-2020 period. Xinhua News Agency and the Shanghai Institute for Social Development of China created a special index that shows how healthy a city is for its residents. This index takes into account the resources of the health system, the services it provides, the degree of protection of the health of citizens, the environment and the overall health of the population. The best result was demonstrated by 17 cities in China, among them the Hainan resort of Sanya.