MOSCOW - Over 5,400 Chinese tourists visited Russian Transbaikal region on a visa-free exchange basis in the first half of the year, up 62.8 percent year on year, the Russian news agency TASS reported Monday.

According to the agency, the local authorities are working on a project to develop tourism between 2017 and 2025 by improving infrastructure and spa complex, and seek to attract tourists from other parts of the country and overseas.

In recent years, the number of tourists visiting Transbaikal region has been on the rise, and 99 percent of them are Chinese, the report said.

The most popular tour sites are its mineral springs, Orthodox churches and monasteries of Chita.

Over 1 million tourists from China visited Russia in 2015, spending nearly $1 billion, according to data from the Moscow tourism department.