ASSESSMENTS

China's Unlikely Weapon: Tourists

Jul 9, 2018 | 09:00 GMT

Chinese tourists take photographs at Mount Fuji in Japan.

Chinese tourists take photographs at Mount Fuji in Japan.

(FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights

  • China will increasingly play gatekeeper to the country's growing middle-class market for luxury goods, manufactures and food products. This consumer class will only gain more clout in the coming decades.
  • Flows of Chinese tourists will be an unexpected tool of statecraft, raising the potential for sharp disruptions to the travel and aviation sectors.
  • These risks are particularly high in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, but extend across Southeast Asia and into the islands of the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific.

Decades of explosive economic growth has handed China numerous tools it can use to exert its influence abroad. Massive defense outlays, foreign direct investment and the sprawling Belt and Road Initiative are the most visible expressions of China's economic might. But amid these earthshaking projects, the Chinese consumer has slowly gained clout. And as the mounting U.S.-China trade tensions have shown, China can and will regulate access to its growing market. Beijing has already brandished the carrot and the stick of access to Chinese consumers for agricultural, luxury and manufactured goods. But one overlooked tactic is its control over how many of its citizens it allows to go abroad and where they can visit. Tourism is an unlikely tool of statecraft, but the massive growth in the number of outbound Chinese travelers means their combined economic weight can have sharp consequences that Beijing will continue to use....

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