Long-term cruise business unlikely upset by Eastern Star tragedy

The recent capsizing of Eastern Star, with 456 people on board, will not affect cruise ship tourism in China in the long term, but may have an immediate fallout, an analyst says.

On June 1, the ship sank in the Yangtze River in Central China's Hubei province, in the face of a fierce storm, killing all but 14 people aboard. A week after the tragedy, Xinhua News Agency reported that the rescuers had retrieved the bodies of 434 victims.

According to Zhang Lingyun, the deputy dean of tourism college at Beijing Union University, the ship capsized owing "mainly to rare weather conditions".