SHENZHEN - Recently, Beijing residents have
become reluctant to bring visiting friends to tour
the six-century-old Forbidden City. The reason is
simple: overcrowding. The world's biggest royal
palace complex, filled with Qing dynasty imperial
treasures, is one of China's unmissable tourist
destinations, and the visitor numbers are
increasing every year. All over China, this story
is repeated for other attractions: the golden age
of Chinese tourism has already arrived.
China is now one of the top four global
tourist nations in the world. In 2005, inbound
tourists reached 120 million, a new record. This
huge
surge in tourism is a sea change; in 1978, the
number of overseas tourists was only 230,000.
Nowadays, foreign tourists can be found in every
corner of the country, with the biggest crowds in
major cities like Shanghai, Xian, Dalian,
Hangzhou, Chongqing, Nanjing and
Guangzhou. Overseas travelers are also visible in
major scenic spots like the Mount Huang (Yellow
Mountain) in Anhui province; Mount
Emei in Sichuan province; Guilin,
the lake-filled city in Guangxi Autonomous
Region; and Mount Lu in Jiangxi province. Even
remote, mountainous Tibet has become a hot tourist
spot.
As one of the world's oldest
civilizations, China has historical tourist
attractions that are second to none. For
culturally inclined tourists, a saying goes, "To
see 25 years of Chinese history, go to Shenzhen;
for 150 years, Shanghai; for 500 years, Beijing;
and for 5,000 years, Xian."
The country is
projected by industry experts to become the number
one tourist country worldwide within only a few
years. The industry's numbers are already
formidable: total tourist income for 2005 reached
US$96 billion, an amazing change considering that
China's tourism sector hardly existed only 30
years ago. The sector now employs over 7 million
people directly and over 33 million people
indirectly.
From overseas to domestic
tourism The most spectacular change of
recent years has been a shift from foreign to
domestic tourism. In 2005, overseas tourists
contributed over $29.3 billion to the Chinese
economy. But their contribution was far outweighed
by that of domestic Chinese tourists, who
contributed $66.7 billion. China is already the
world's biggest domestic tourism market in terms
of number of tourists.
Most Chinese
tourists go to local scenic spots. But well-to-do
Chinese are increasingly willing to travel
anywhere within China and beyond. Foreign travel,
restricted or unaffordable for decades, has become
irresistible for tens of millions of Chinese. Most
- over 90% in 2005 - visit other Asian nations.
But more and more Chinese tourists are visiting
Europe, Australia, North America, Africa and the
rest of the world. The Chinese are as curious as
any other people. As one Chinese travel executive
said, "Countless Chinese would rush to see the
moon [at] once if it became commercially
possible."
Overall, mass tourism is a
relatively new phenomenon in China and has only
emerged since 1978. Its popularity has both taken
advantage of, and helped to bring about, the
greater openness and vibrancy in Chinese society.
The bad old days ... In the Mao
Zedong era, travel as a commercial activity was
almost nonexistent, due to enormous bureaucratic
barriers. Travel was restricted, just as choices
were restricted in other areas like employment and
residency. The government managed the lives of
people according to its own needs, and whatever
citizens wanted to do, including travel, required
official approvals.
Commercial tourism was
basically impossible in this environment. Aspiring
tourists first needed to obtain approval from
their employers. Merely having the money to travel
was not good enough. Because the food supply was
completely controlled by the government, there was
a constant food shortage for several decades; each
citizen was allowed a fixed amount with
government-issued ration coupons, and these food
coupons could only be used in certain areas.
If a person traveled from one city to
another within the same province, he had to first
get special food coupons for food in the visited
city, besides paying for transportation and
accommodation. Traveling outside a province took
different food coupons. Those classified as
farmers faced even greater hurdles, because
farmers were completely banned from traveling to
urban regions in general.
Checking into a
hotel required an employer's introduction letter.
Even this could not get you a room in the nicest
hotels, which were reserved for high-ranking
bureaucrats. Each and every citizen, including
poets, teachers, dancers, business executives and
even monks, as well as all organizations, were
given a bureaucratic ranking by the government.
Even the top manager at a small company
was not allowed to stay at a nice hotel or take a
first-class train, because under this system, his
company's bureaucratic ranking, hence his ranking,
was not high enough for that.
Ironically,
many good-quality hotels and resorts were
underused during the Maoist period, because even
if there were not enough qualified officials
requesting accommodation, the hotels were not
allowed to sell the rooms to other people.
Such rules have gradually been lifted in
the reform era. For example, by 1991, the
government stopped requiring domestic travelers to
show their bureaucratic ranking to take a
first-class train. But there were massive
socioeconomic forces behind the rule changes.
What caused the tourism
boom? Many factors have contributed to the
tourism boom, which has happened more by accident
than by design.
First, the economic
expansion has helped fundamentally. For example,
Shenzhen, a special economic zone since 1980, has
built countless new factories, requiring millions
of workers, which attracted tens of millions of
inland Chinese. These workers became accustomed to
travel and familiar with the tourism
infrastructure during their journeys between
Shenzhen and their home provinces, which
ultimately promoted the travel industry. Because
more than 160 million rural Chinese have migrated
to urban China in the past few decades, the
magnitude of this effect has been large.
Second, the private sector has come to
life, and as a byproduct, tens of millions of
businessmen have needed to travel everywhere on
business. In particular, small rural businessmen
preferred to set up shops in major cities. The
huge numbers of such people, and their adroitness
at exploiting holes in the old system, made it
essentially impossible to control their movements,
further boosting domestic travel.
Third,
the ever-increasing foreign involvement has helped
tremendously. For one thing, foreign companies are
given special privileges. They can hire all sorts
of people from anywhere in the country.
Twenty-four million Chinese now work for overseas
employers, and these employees are allowed to
travel anywhere.
In addition, of course,
more and more overseas tourists have come to
China, setting new records every year. They always
get preferential treatment from the service
providers as well as the government, which has
created an overall improvement in China's tourist
industry. International involvement has helped to
foster a more liberal, open environment for China
in general.
Fourth, the expanding economy
has given rise to income increases for average
citizens. As a result, more and more Chinese have
gained the financial resources to travel. A few
years ago, their collective contribution to
tourism revenues passed that of foreign tourists,
and as time goes by, their predominance in the
sector will only become greater.
Fifth,
rapidly improving infrastructure as well as
service quality have further helped. Only 20 years
ago, traveling by air was uncommon, but today it
is extremely common. There are daily flights to
most sizable Chinese cities. A complete chain of
tourism services now exists, ranging from tour
services to hotels to a full menu of
transportation options, which did not exist as
recently as the 1980s.
Sixth, tourism has
become an enormous source of income for local
government bodies - especially in inland areas
like Xian which have world-class attractions but a
relatively narrow economic base - which has
naturally made them compete with each other to
attract even more tourists. This competition has
further lifted the old barriers.
Even
Beijing has employed the tourist industry for its
own ends, and numerous policies favorable to the
industry have gradually emerged. One very
significant change came in 2000, when domestic
tourism was already a major force in economic
growth. At the time, China's economy had shifted
from a shortage-filled one to one characterized by
chronic oversupply. This demanded both greater
consumption and a cut in production; one of
numerous measures introduced to deal with the
situation was an extension of holidays.
As
a result, Labor Day and National Anniversary Day
were both extended from one day to a full week
(the so-called "Golden Week"). The Golden Week
holidays have further fueled the industry, but
have also created major problems with congestion
due to so many people traveling at the same time.
In 2000, during the Labor Day break, the
author traveled to the seaside city of Xiemen in
Fujian province, but failed to find a hotel room -
the city was completely filled by tens of
thousands of vacationers. As a result, I moved on
to a nearby port city, Quanzhou, which fortunately
turned out to be a very nice alternative.
Signs of a changing industry The
Chinese tourist industry has seen many changes,
especially in the past decade. For example, travel
companies are no long exclusively state companies,
though the biggest names remain state brands, like
China Travel, China International Travel and China
Youth Travel.
Countless private travel
companies have emerged, though most are small
compared to their state counterparts. Many state
travel companies have changed from within; they
have become shareholding companies and are even
listed on the stock market. Internet travel
companies now exist as well, for example, eLong, a
private firm already listed on NASDAQ.
Government resorts have gradually become
commercially oriented; most realize that there is
more business potential in serving ordinary
travelers and businesses than in limiting
themselves to their traditional client base of
government officials.
Many private
businessmen now employ these government resorts to
entertain clients and host promotional shows. The
author encountered an interesting example of this
phenomenon recently, in the popular hot spring
resort town of Chonghua, located in a rural area
near Guangzhou. The biggest hot spring resort
there was formerly reserved for senior officials.
On its promotional window, many old photos were
displayed, which features many leaders of the
Maoist period who visited there.
The only
foreign face was former US president Richard
Nixon, who visited the resort in the spring of
1976. The resort is now open to anyone who has
money to spend. During my visit, two Chinese
companies from Guangzhou had rented the entire
place for the purpose of entertaining their
distributors and clients.
Directly across
the street, there is a new resort owned by a
private businessman from Guangdong province.
Though much smaller and less scenic than the
government resort, this new contender is cleverly
designed with two dozen pools named "rose",
"ginseng", "coffee", "wine" and so on, after the
ingredients mixed into the pools. It is doing
better than the government resort, according to
locals.
Naturally, the Chinese tourism
boom has attracted interest from big global
players like Hilton, Holiday Inn, Shangri-la,
Sheraton and ANA, among others, whose hotels can
now be found in leading Chinese cities.
Many Chinese-owned hotels and resorts hire
these international brands as contract operators,
taking advantage of customers' familiarity with
the brand , which increases the success rate of a
new hotel.
Actually, the very first
five-star hotel in China, the state-owned White
Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, hired an overseas
management team to run it for two decades. This
outsourcing model has become popular in China's
hotel business; by such means the quality of
service for business travelers has been fast
improving, contributing to the general improvement
in the tourist industry.
Government
adds to tourists' woes Despite these
positive changes, there is plenty of room for
improvement. Government units still have a
tendency to see tourists as a resource to be
exploited rather than trying to help them. For
example, the municipal governments of both Tianjin and Shanghai
charge a fee of $2.50-$3.00 for inbound cars with
out-of-city plates. Recently, in a well-publicized
case, a Chinese lawyer who was required to pay
this charge went to court to try to get his money
back, but his claim was denied in court, a
disappointment for the Chinese public.
Internal movement controls left over from
a more restrictive era also continue to impede
tourism. A good example is the fence surrounding
the special economic zone (SEZ) of Shenzhen,
intended to prevent peasants from entering the
zone without permission. The construction of the
fence was one of the very first acts undertaken by
the government after the SEZ was established in
1980; its construction cost 130 million yuan
(equivalent to US$16.2 million today), which was
nearly the total amount of the income contribution
by Guangdong province to the
central government in that year.
Passing
through the fence required a special permit
costing 30 yuan, about a month's salary for a
typical worker at the time. The fee was paid by
hundreds of millions of Chinese visitors,
providing a very high return on the government's
investment. But how many more visitors might have
come had the annoyance of the permit and fee not
existed will never be known.
The author
once asked a government official why the
authorities created so many hurdles for people. He
replied: "Well, it is just the way for the
government to provide an effective management for
the interest of society. For example, if you don't
stop rural people from seeking employment in the
cities, very soon all cities would be filled with
rural migrants."
But the reality is that
at least 160 million rural workers already work in
the cities and they are among the biggest
contributors for China's progress. For this, the
official replied, "It [could] become very chaotic
if the government controls [movements] less." But
the real problem is that all the obvious
government intrusions are presented as modern
management.
The future of Chinese
tourism Despite such
obstacles, the interests of Chinese tourists have
been promoted by their increasing popularity with the
international tourism industry, which covets their
free-spending ways, and foreign governments, who see
big profit potential in attracting more Chinese
travelers. The results of this trend are
already evident: in 2005, over 31 million overseas trips
were made by Chinese passport holders, a
50-fold jump from 20 years ago. One can
safely predict that the number of outbound Chinese
tourists may reach 100 million within the next
decade.
The impact of the tourist
boom goes well beyond the travel industry -
for example, the increasing awareness of what
"good service" is will, by itself, have a
substantial impact on the quality of life in China. And
the internationalization of hotels has fed
the internationalization of other industries, as
the foreign investors staying in the hotels
exert their influence beyond the hotel doors.
These effects will only grow in the future, as
the benefits of tourism continue to sink in
year after year.
George Zhibin
Gu, a business consultant based in China, is
the author of a new book, China's Global
Reach: Markets, Multinationals, and
Globalization (www.Trafford.com), with
an afterword by Andre Gunder Frank. He can be
reached at gzb678@yahoo.com.cn.
(Copyright 2006 George Zhibin Gu. Used
by permission.)
