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NANNING, Sept. 19-- Pham Thi Nguyet Hoa, a vendor living in Vietnam's Mong Cai, comes to Dongxing, a southern Chinese port city, to sell Vietnam fruits every day. When night falls, she often ends up with thousands of yuan in her pocket, much more than what she can earn at home. "Most of my customers are Chinese, and it is very convenient to exchange Chinese yuan to Vietnamese Dong as many banks in Dongxing have this currency exchange service," said Pham. Tourism has been a pillar industry in the border city of southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Dongxing port saw 12 million people, of which half were tourists, pass through last year, ranking first among all land ports in China. In the first six months this year, tourism consumption at the port exceeded 6.2 billion yuan (874 million U.S. dollars), up 40.4 percent from the year before. The flourishing border tourism has brought a huge demand for currency exchange, with a slew of financial reforms rolled out in recent years. In 2017, the ABC China (Dongxing Experimental Zone) ASEAN Currency business center was established in Dongxing, allowing direct convertibility of Chinese yuan and Vietnamese Dong. In February 2018, a total of 8 million yuan was transferred in cash from Vietnam to China, marking the first cross-border cash transfer in Guangxi between China and Vietnam. Fan Zuojun, vice president of Guangxi University, said the cross-border cash transfer will further promote the financial cooperation between China and Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as deepen reform and push forward the internationalization of the Chinese currency in the region. | 
