The Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a Chinese think tank, and Ctrip, a popular Chinese online platform for tourism services, jointly published a report on outbound and inbound tourism on July 5, revealing that far more people went to other countries and regions from China than visited the mainland.
According to the report, there were 122 million trips made by Chinese nationals abroad, while only 28.15 million foreigners visited China in the same period. The report also revealed that Chinese tourists spent US$260 billion abroad in 2016, a figure which has been growing by more than 10 percent annually for 12 consecutive years, despite the sluggish global economy.
In comparison, however, China’s inbound tourism has been developing at a much slower pace. From 2005 to 2015, the number of Chinese nationals traveling abroad grew by 312.9 percent, while the number of foreigners coming to China grew by just 11.2 percent.
The report warned that the deficit will expand if China neglects to exploit the country’s abundant historical and cultural resources to attract foreigners.