Officials of China's western region have announced cash incentives for tourists who would spend their holidays there despite the deadly  terror attacks that have plagued Xinjiang in recent months.

Tourism authorities in Xinjiang said they are creating a special fund valued at more than CNY198 million, which would allow them to give each tourist a bonus of CNY500 for visiting the province.

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XinjiangTourism Chief Inaam Nesirdin said in an interview with China Radio International that the province's tourism had been booming in previous years but a recent spate of violence has caused the number of visitors to drop by 40 percent between March and May compared to last year's figures.

Nesirdin added that many tourists have cancelled their trips to Xinjiang following the terror attack at Kunming in March where knife-wielding assailants stormed a train station and killed scores of people and wounded more than a hundred others.

Xinjiang is thrice the size of France and is famous for its spectacular snow-capped mountains. It is home to desert oasis towns and ruins of ancient cities.

In the 1960s, Xinjiang was also home to the Red Mountain Command Base, a secret military facility where research was undertaken for China's first atom bomb. The facility was recently converted to a CNY313.647-million theme park as a tribute to the country’s Communist Party.

Despite its high tourism potential, however, Xinjiang has seen one too many incidents of violent terror attacks that government mostly blamed on religious extremists.

The recorded death toll from knife and bomb attacks in Xinjiang stands at more than 80. In March, 29 people died from an organized knife attack mounted by terrorists at the Kunming train station. On May 22, another 44 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack at a street market in the capital Urumqi.

TagsInaam Nesirdin, Xinjiang, Urumqi