China has now become the top source of non-ASEAN inbound tourists for ASEAN countries, surpassing European visitors. Chinese are also among the largest tourist groups for a number of other Asian destinations, including Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia and South Korea.
Chinese outbound tourism has been driving the transformation and development of regional tourism in Asia. But besides evidencing growing wealth and the emergence of holiday-making as a cultural trend, Chinese outbound tourism also highlights some of the peculiar features of China’s development.
The rapid increase in outbound Chinese tourism has its origins in the reforms that have led to substantial increases in disposable income for many Chinese families. The more open Chinese economy also brought new liberty of movement, which had previously been strictly controlled by the state.
Yet in Asia, the emergence of ‘travel’ as a popular leisure activity is a relatively new phenomenon. This is particularly the case in China where 80 per cent of the population was agrarian in the 1980s. Targeted state policies facilitated the boom in China’s domestic tourism market since then.
Chinese outbound tourism was in full swing by the 2000s, though the first outbound visits took place in the early 1980s from mainland China to its border cities of Hong Kong and Macau, largely to visit relatives. The 1990s saw strong growth in cross-border tourism between China and neighbouring countries such as Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and the states of the former Soviet Union. Western countries began to issue group tourist visas for the Chinese in the mid-2000s.
In just a decade’s time, Chinese tourists have surpassed the Japanese and the Germans to become the biggest tourist spenders in Asia and in the world, prompting numerous countries to offer preferential visa application processes for Chinese.
While some Chinese tourists are obsessed with consuming internationally recognised luxury brand items, the majority of Chinese visitors actually purchase day-to-day consumer products, such as shampoo, toothpaste, washing powder, manufactured medicine, diapers and baby food. This is especially the case for Chinese consumers from Guangdong province and other southern areas who, through the Individual Visit Scheme, can travel solo to Hong Kong and Macau rather than with a group tour and stock up on household essentials.
But this phenomenon also indicates peculiarities in China’s development, as many millions of Chinese cross borders in search of higher-quality consumer products to meet their everyday needs. Baby products, for example, have been in high demand ever since the melamine-tainted dairy products scandal of 2008. For many Chinese, travelling to Hong Kong or Macau is now the most time- and cost-efficient way to obtain such items. Hong Kong, which has a population of seven million, hosted more than 40 million Chinese visitors in 2015, with 60 per cent being same-day visitors.
Tourism is also closely related to intraregional migration. Asia now accounts for most of the world’s international and cross-border migration. Many visitors cross the border not for ‘tourism’ but for short-term work, to tap into overseas investment markets or for educational opportunities.
People from less-developed countries tend to seek work and education opportunities in more advanced Asian economies and states. But entrepreneurs from advanced and expanding economies are eager to exploit cheaper production resources in less-developed countries, such as Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Many Chinese outbound tourists are seeking overseas investment opportunities. At the China–Vietnam border, tour agencies often entertain groups of Chinese entrepreneurs and merchants. China’s new rich also flock to South Korea to secure their investments in the real estate market.
China has a significant cross-border relationship with Hong Kong. Over 40,000 mainland Chinese typically travel to Hong Kong each year for family reunions alone. And of this group, most conduct multiple temporary visits to Hong Kong over some years to obtain the appropriate resident permit.
Since 1997 an increasing number of Chinese students have enrolled in Hong Kong universities. There are a number of reasons for this trend, including Hong Kong’s proximity to China, relatively low fees and a policy that entitles mainland Chinese graduates of Hong Kong universities to work in Hong Kong regardless of the year that they graduate. Many mainland students also consider Hong Kong a stepping stone to other opportunities abroad. These substantial outflows of talent from China have become a serious concern for the Chinese government.
Both source and destination countries for travellers across Asia will have to develop long-term strategies to better manage these increasing flows of people. Asian populations also need to prepare for the rapidly changing population dynamics of their own territories, and the ever-shifting human landscape from short and long-term cross-border people flows.
Yuk Wah Chan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong.
An extended version of this article appeared in the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Reinventing Japan’.