Two Japanese floats nixed from parade
The local tourism bureau announced Tuesday that two Japanese floats will not participate in the 2012 Shanghai Tourism Festival parade as scheduled, as a territory dispute between China and Japan has intensified.
"Due to the recent political atmosphere between China and Japan, Japan's floats for the Shanghai Tourism Festival parade Saturday have been cancelled," Dao Shuming, director of the Shanghai Municipal Tourism Bureau, told a reporter from the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
The reporter had asked whether the dispute over the Diaoyu Islands would hurt Japanese interests in local tourism.
China and Japan both claim the group of islands in the East China Sea.
Yang Jun, spokesperson for the Shanghai Municipal Government, also commented on the dispute at the press conference. "We value friendly relations with neighboring countries, but we will not back down over territory issues," she said.
The 23rd Shanghai Tourism Festival, which runs from Saturday to October 6, aims to promote local tourism. Event organizers plan to kick off the event with a parade at the Expo Park in Pudong New Area that features 23 floats from home and abroad. Floats from Osaka and Kagawa Prefecture in Japan had been scheduled to appear in the parade.
At the press conference, tourism officials reported that Shanghai welcomed 4.71 million overseas visitors in the first seven months of 2012, a 2.5 percent increase over the same period last year.
Shanghai also hopes to develop conference tourism. The city hosted 751 international conferences in 2011. It ranked 24th in the world as an international conference host, according to the International Association of Conference Centers.
To make the city more attractive to tourists, the tourism bureau will launch a new tour bus line Sunday that connects Lujiazui in Pudong New Area to downtown Puxi, the tourism bureau said. The bus will provide service in eight languages, introducing local tourist attractions and landmarks.
The line will be in addition to the open-top double-decker sightseeing buses that currently run downtown.
The annual festival offers tourists and residents scores of shopping and dining discounts. Huangpu district will offer discount coupons worth more than 1 million yuan ($157,770) to local residents and tourists in the Yangtze River Delta Region to encourage spending.
Dao said the local government has invested 10 billion yuan to the Disney project so far in 2012. The theme park in Pudong New Area is expected to open in 2015. "The construction work at Shanghai Disneyland is on schedule," he said.
Local marathon organizer strikes Japanese company from race's name
The organizer of a long-running marathon in Shanghai has removed its Japanese sponsor's name from the title of the race in light of the ongoing territory dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu Islands, the local sports bureau announced Tuesday evening.
The 2012 Toray Cup Shanghai International Marathon will go forward, but under the name of the 2012 Shanghai International Marathon, according to a post on the Shanghai Municipal Sports Bureau's official microblog.
"Considering the Japanese government's position on the Diaoyu Islands, the committee decided that it's not currently appropriate to hold the race, which was sponsored by a Japanese company," the bureau said in the post. "But because it is a traditional race, the 2012 Shanghai International Marathon will go ahead as scheduled."
Earlier Tuesday, the race's organizer, the Committee of the 2012 Toray Cup Shanghai International Marathon, canceled its press conference without explanation five minutes after it started.
The organizer had called the press conference to announce registration details about the 17th annual marathon, according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. The Tokyo-based industrial products company Toray Industries Inc has been a major sponsor of the race.
Global Times