The global top 20 museum visits for 2023 were recently released by the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) and American infrastructure consulting firm AECOM. Guangdong Museum, located in Tianhe district of Guangzhou, made the list and ranked 16th.

The top-ranked museum is the Louvre Museum in France, totaling visits of 8.86 million, and the National Museum of China placed third with 6.76 million visitors.

Visitors queue up to enter the Guangdong Museum. [Photo/Yangcheng Evening News]

By the end of 2023, there were 6,833 museums in China, of which more than 90 percent were open free of charge, said Zhang Peng, an associate professor at the Nanjing Normal University.

"Chinese museums have deep cultural heritages and rich historical collections, such as the gigantic Simuwu (Houmuwu) ding bronze cauldron (a sacrificial vessel) at the National Museum of China, which are of great attraction to tourists," Zhang added.

According to Liu Zheng, a member of the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics, there are two main reasons for China's museum boom.

The first is people's pursuit of spiritual culture. As places to display outstanding traditional cultural achievements, museums have naturally become the best choice for people, Liu noted.

He added that applying technologies like AI to exhibitions makes them more attractive to visitors.