Though bird flu has so far not created anything close to the kind of public scare that Sars whipped up here last year, the Chinese authorities appear to be taking no chances after Thailand found what could be the first human-to-human transmission of the deadly H5N1 strain.

The Agriculture Ministry warned on its website that a new bird flu outbreak may strike ´any time´ with the onset of the seasonal migration of wild birds and fresh outbreaks in South-east Asian countries like Thailand and Malaysia.

The last time China reported a fresh outbreak of bird flu was in late July, when several chickens in the eastern province of Anhui were found to have died from the H5N1 virus.

But the migration of wild birds and outbreaks in neighbouring countries ´posed a certain threat to China´, the ministry warned in its circular, urging the local authorities to step up surveillance and preventive work in a ´responsible and timely manner´.

The latest warning extends the trend where the Chinese government finds itself girding for a major viral outbreak as millions go on holiday.

China´s tourism industry banks heavily on the country´s three week-long holidays - the Chinese New Year, May Day, and the Oct 1 National Day celebrations.

But only two of the six week-long holidays since 2003 have been free of worries about Sars or bird flu - adding to the kind of extreme upswings and depression in the market that has frustrated many tour agencies here.

Last year´s May Day travel season, for instance, was effectively wiped out by the Sars outbreak.

But the National Day holiday five months later, which was untroubled by either Sars or the bird flu, set a new record of 34.6 billion yuan (S$7 billion) in tourist earnings as nearly 90 million Chinese criss-crossed the country to visit various scenic spots.

´There was a massive surge of travellers at that time after Sars kept many people at home for months, but we don´t like such a situation at all,´ said Mr Jiang Weihao, marketing manager of Shanghai Spring International Travel Service.

´These sudden upswings create a host of problems like overcrowding and reduce the overall quality of the tours.´

For years, industry players and academics have been calling for the Golden Week holidays to be abolished in place of a paid holiday system, though the Chinese authorities have shown little signs of moving in that direction.

The latest bird flu outbreaks in Malaysia and Thailand did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the Chinese travellers, though interviews with six major tour agencies in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou suggest that they were seeing only modest growth, or about the same level of business as last year.

The bright spot this year has been the European tour packages, the agencies said. Chinese tour agencies were allowed to organise group tours to 26 European Union countries from Sept 1.

Mainland travellers are paying between 12,000 yuan and 19,500 yuan each - three to four times the average monthly salary of a young white-collar worker - to join these tours that take them to countries such as France, Germany and Italy.

´The European tours are popular partly because of the novelty involved and also because the weather there now is really good,´ said Mrs Wen Qian, the marketing manager of GZL International Travel Service in Guangzhou.