Sri Lanka is targeting 25,000 tourists from China in 2012 with expectations that arrivals will rise to 300,000 in 2016 making it the second largest source of foreign tourists to the country, an official said.

Chairman of Sri Lanka's tourist development authority Nalaka Godahewa said in 2011, 16,000 Chinese tourists came to Sri Lanka, a year which saw total arrivals rising 30 percent to 855,000.

"Each year 65 million Chinese travel outside the country," Godahewa said. "Maldives gets about 180,000 Chinese tourists. But we have to prepare the background to receive more Chinese visitors."

Godahewa said if the right conditions are met, Sri Lanka could get 300,000 Chinese tourists by 2016, when the country is targeting two million visitors.

The tourist authorities have begun to promote places of interest to Chinese tourists.

Godahewa said the authority has proposed the inclusion of an exhibit about the Chinese navigator admiral Zheng He, who visited Sri Lanka in 1405. He is said to have travelled in a fleet of 317 ships with 27,800 sailors the largest naval fleet the world have ever seen.