Chinese outbound tourism and soft power

ABSTRACT

A boom in Chinese outbound tourism representing a much welcome boost to the economy of other countries has drawn global attention. Drawing upon the concept of soft power, this study explores how China use outbound tourism as an exercise of soft power, what achievements are related to this, and looks at the challenge and dilemmas that are related to this issue. It is found that tourism based soft power is being built both through government policies, which include approved destination status, tourism culture activities, tourism foreign aid and tourism cooperation as well as interactions amongst the tourists and hosts in addition to businesses. This study argues that the outcomes depend mainly on its economic power, agenda-setting, and somewhere between hard and soft power, rather than upon the country's attraction. It also establishes that soft power building through Chinese outbound tourism may be more effective in the Southeast Asian, Asia-Pacific, African and South American countries than in Western countries due to closer economic relationships, cultural similarities and shared beliefs.

KEYWORDS:

• Soft power
• Chinese outbound tourism
• tourism diplomacy
• China
• international relationship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Honggang Xu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1354-6654