"Our strong point is outbound Chinese tourism, and since we have conducted a lot of research on this topic, our member cities receive the latest information and profiles about Chinese tourists."

In 2018, Chinese tourists made 150 million visits abroad, an increase of 14.7 percent compared to the previous year.

The federation started with 56 city members and now it has a member network of more than 200 cities.

"More cities around the world are taking up the initiative to join us,"Matuzevich says.

A summer trip to China with his father in 2005 planted the seeds of desire in him to further explore the country.

He acted as an English-Latvian interpreter for his father who didn't speak much English, and they traveled to Guangzhou in southern Guangdong province, Changsha in central Hunan province, and Beijing.

"Everything was on a huge scale, with so many skyscrapers and crowds of people," he recalls, adding that it was quite different from his home.

After graduating from high school, Matuzevich spent just a month at an international university studying business in the neighboring country of Estonia.

"It didn't really suit me and I felt like I needed to learn more and see the world, so I decided to move to China to study the Chinese language and get to know the culture," he says.

In February 2008, Matuzevich arrived in Beijing to study Mandarin at Tsinghua University.

"The first half of the year in China was the most challenging, but at the same time, it was the most fun," he says.

"It was refreshing and exciting to meet people from all over the world, such as South Africa, Chile, Canada and the UK," he says.