World domination through tourism?

Trains in waiting

The focus of tourism has moved east – will China weaponise their tourism power all the way down the Silk Road?

The Silk Road represents the biggest tourism opportunity for a generation but will the number 1 tourism source market, China, use it to assert their soft power?

Already the power of Chinese tourism is having a major effect on the Silk Road countries on the way to the west. For instance, around Lake Baikal in Siberia there is local agitation as Chinese people buy property; near Almaty in Kazakhstan a major tourism development is taking place to attract Chinese people to gamble. High speed trains will shortly run from Beijing to Berlin. Will they be loaded with groups of west-bound tourists?

It is a short step to Chinese branded hotels and restaurants all along the Silk Road even to Germany and Italy. It is an even shorter step to China’s centrally-organised tourism taking place from China to the Mediterranean.

The benefit to China? Wielding economic and political power through outbound tourism.

Bournemouth University UK is currently gathering a wide range of knowledge to investigate tall this activity. They say:

"While there has been considerable scholarly work on soft power and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the political and economic investment in Chinese outbound tourism deserves greater attention."

"Whereas the number of trips abroad taken by Chinese citizens was in the tens of thousands in the 1980s, the current figure is well over 130m per year. While it may remain a marginal phenomenon in demographic or trade terms, tourism is a crucial issue in contemporary China, a major object of governmentality and a means to push soft power initiatives to receptive countries."

The Silk Road has been an important thoroughfare for centuries, for the last 20 years or so it has been developed as a tourist route with the UNWTO Silk Road initiative bringing 34 countries together to brand themselves as Silk Road Countries and to develop tourism cooperatively.

China’s $1trillion plus ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ which follows and extends the Silk Road looks rather more daunting. The Chinese government calls the initiative "a bid to enhance regional connectivity and embrace a brighter future".

Others see it as a push by China to take a larger role in global affairs with a China-centred trading network – and maybe a massive tourism push.

Sooner or later the massive potential of over a billion tourists had to achieve political status.

Valere Tjolle

Valere is editor and publisher of this year’s just released Sustainable Tourism 02