Wolfgang Georg Arlt. China's Outbound Tourism. New York: Routledge, 2006. xv + 300 pp.p Illustrations + maps. ISBN 978-0-203-96816-1; $170.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-36536-9.

Reviewed by Tim Oakes
Published on H-Travel (September, 2008)
Commissioned by Patrick R. Young (University of Massachusetts-Lowell)

Tourism as Foreign Policy

The main argument of this book is that outbound tourism is used as a tool in China’s foreign policy, particularly in the central government’s efforts to strengthen ties with overseas Chinese.  Tourism, Wolgang Georg Arlt argues, has been a major tool in achieving the goal of raising transnational Chinese identity to the benefit of the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC).  Thus, Arlt offers an examination of outbound tourism that emphasizes its development along the established channels and pathways forged by overseas Chinese, as well as the central government’s efforts to deploy outbound tourism as a conduit for overseas Chinese to rekindle their connections to the mainland.  Of course, travel abroad is also something highly desired by people in China, making outbound tourism a dynamic interplay of state political needs and social desires.  While this perspective on tourism is certainly welcome, and offers an intriguing view of state practice and social change in China, China’s Outbound Tourism is not a book about political power in China.  Nor does it address in great detail the broader social changes within which outbound tourism has emerged in China.  Instead, Arlt offers a meticulous study of outbound tourism itself.  Indeed, so comprehensive is Arlt’s study that his central argument appears to get somewhat lost in the details.  This is not, however, a fatal deficiency, as scholars of tourism and China studies alike will find much to learn in this thorough and timely book.

After a brief sketch of the book’s central argument, as summarized above, Arlt offers a review of China’s economic reforms before diving into substantive discussion of China’s tourism policies and the development of tourism demand in China.  Particularly useful here is Arlt’s discussion of the ongoing development of China’s “Approved Destination Status” (ADS) system, which he analyzes as the final vestige of the central government’s efforts to “keep outbound tourism within the boundaries of China’s foreign policy interests and of the idea that tourism should bring in and not leak hard currency” (p. 31).  While the material is rich with details regarding every aspect of the ADS system (and related policy developments), the overall discussion traces a gradual transformation in the government’s approach to tourism from treating it as an instrument for attracting revenue in hard currency to a symbolic marker of the modern and well-off society that China seeks to become.  That is, the government has slowly come to regard touristic consumption less with the Mao-era suspicion of bourgeois lifestyles and more with the post-Mao nationalism that strives to assert China’s place among the global pageant of modern nations.  Such a transformation, Arlt points out, has meant an increasingly important role--in the government’s eyes--for outbound tourism.  Inbound tourism has enjoyed a privileged policy position since the post-Mao reforms began, owing to its being viewed as a chief instrument for attracting foreign exchange revenue.  Only recently, however, has outbound tourism shifted from a tolerated if not discouraged symptom of modernization to an actively encouraged sign that China has "arrived" on the world stage.

After his examination of policy developments, Arlt turns to a quantitative assessment of outbound tourism, followed by a discussion of the characteristics and motivations of Chinese tourists.  Here, the material is somewhat less compelling, depending mostly on a review of secondary literature and industry surveys.  Given that determining tourist motivations is very tricky business regardless of where the tourists come from, Arlt’s discussion of Chinese tourist motivations rests on only the most general assumptions about culture and behavior in China.  For example, he writes: “Chinese tourists ask for value for money and respect, but are less annoyed if things are done in a different way than at home”; “Chinese tourists are known for their last-minute decision making”; and “Chinese leisure tourists are normally in a hurry because they want to see as much as possible in as short a time as possible” (p. 113).  As with all generalizations and stereotypes, these may contain elements of truth, but they also hide complexity.

Most problematic in this regard is the reliance on Geert Hofstede’s cultural index scores, and a general inclination toward defining ideal typologies of tourists.  The well-worn dichotomy of Western individualism vs. Chinese collectivism is trotted out by Arlt in an effort to make some general claims about the behavior of Chinese tourists vis-à-vis Western tourists.  And while Arlt is at pains to point out that Chinese and Japanese tourists are as different from each other as they are from Western tourists, his analysis lacks the nuance that the complexities of tourist motivation--regardless of who those tourists are--deserve.  Increasingly, the study of tourist motivations is finding that ideal types only obscure actual tourist behavior and that tourists act according to many different behavioral patterns that have more to do with the contexts in which travel occurs, rather than the cultural backgrounds of the travelers themselves.  Arlt misses an opportunity to expand on this recent work by remaining fixed on “Chinese culture” as the essential determinant of the behavior of Chinese tourists.

Despite these drawbacks, Arlt offers a very useful and seemingly exhaustive review of the secondary literature on Chinese travelers.  In the broadest terms, we learn much about Chinese travelers, such as their preferences for gambling and shopping, and their assertive nationalism.  Arlt confirms that Chinese tourists are probably less interested these days in "searching for modernity" as they travel, and more interested in entertainment, shopping, and asserting Chinese national identity abroad.  We also learn some important things about the sources of dissatisfaction for Chinese tourists, and how these mainly have to do not with the quality of the product they consume but with the way in which they consume it.  Arlt identifies a lack of face-giving practices as the main problem for Chinese tourists abroad.  They are not given the opportunity to experience the kind of prestige they feel they deserve.  For instance, the lack of signage in Chinese or Chinese cuisine at tourist destinations, as well as the assumption that Chinese tourists and Japanese tourists want the same things in their tours, are offered by Arlt as examples of problems that contribute the most to Chinese tourist dissatisfaction.   North American tourists find McDonald’s everywhere they go, so why should not Chinese tourists find Chinese food wherever they go?  These observations, then, inform some suggestions that Arlt offers to tourist destinations seeking to attract repeat visits from Chinese tourists.

A more theoretically minded book might consider these findings in relation to the Euro-American tourist literature’s focus on modernity and authenticity.  Under that paradigm, for instance, it has always made sense to see Chinese outbound tourism as simply an extension of China’s search for modernity.  The overall portrait offered by Arlt, however, suggests a somewhat different story, making China’s Outbound Tourism an important resource for challenging the Eurocentric nature of tourism studies.  As it is though, the book only devotes one very brief chapter to the implications of China’s growing outbound tourism market for tourism studies in general.  Arlt is apparently content to let readers make the conceptual connections themselves.  He has certainly presented enough material to provide an important step toward decolonizing tourism studies.  For that reason alone, this is an important and very welcome book.

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Citation: Tim Oakes. Review of Arlt, Wolfgang Georg, China's Outbound Tourism. H-Travel, H-Net Reviews. September, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15674

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