A tourist charter flight with almost 200 passengers departed Shanghai for Moscow Wednesday as local Chinese authorities hope to promote tourism exchanges under the agreement reached by the two countries' leaders.

The group of tourists, headed by Shanghai's Vice Mayor Zhao Wen, will visit Moscow and St. Petersburg over the next six days and attend a string of activities jointly held by the China National Tourism Administration and Russian tourism authorities.

It is the first tourist charter flight Shanghai has dispatched to Russia in the "Tourism Year of Russia."

In October last year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and then Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin agreed in Beijing that the two countries would hold "Tourism Year of Russia" in China in 2012 and the "Tourism Year of China" in Russia in 2013.

More than 200 events are scheduled to be held during the "Tourism Year of Russia."

Shanghai and St. Petersburg have been sister cities for decades.

"To further enhance travel exchanges and cooperation between Shanghai and Russian cities, the Shanghai municipal government has made great efforts to boost tourism activities between the two sides," Zhao said.

According to statistics of Chinese tourism authorities, about 3.35 million travelers from both sides visited each other's country last year. Russia is now China's third largest tourist source country, and China is Russia's second largest tourist source country.

In 2011, the number of Russian visitors to Shanghai grew 10.61 percent year-on-year to exceed 78,000, and the number of Shanghai's visitors to Russia was nearly 120,000, up 45.4 percent from a year earlier.