Chinese tourists: the mismatch between stereotype and reality

Chinese tourists: they are immediately recognized all over the world. They come together in big troops, they like to take many pictures, and they do not recognize your garden as private property. This description is the mainstream Western image, or rather stereotype, of Chinese tourists.

On the internet there are many negative articles and videos that reflect this stereotype. For example: 5 reasons why Chinese tourists are so rude, a Swedish video about how the Chinese need to behave in Sweden, a video about How to be a Chinese tourists, a video about Chinese tourists who need to stop pooping, making noice, stop picking, stop yelling when they are abroad - and there are many more examples.

However, the travel behavior of Chinese tourists has changed in the past years from an ‘altogether, all-in vacation’ to a more ‘free and independent’ way of traveling. Social media, and especially the Chinese social media WeChat, have a big influence on this change. The influence of social media is a feature of globalization. Through social media, people all over the world can connect with each other. Therefore, habits, customs and behavior that fits a particular local culture, can become more global. For example when I want to know something about Chinese culture, I can use Facebook. It is no longer needed to first travel to China before knowing something about their culture. Appadurai (1996) calls the phenomena that a local culture becomes more global ‘culturescaping’.

As mentioned above, the travel behavior of Chinese tourists changes into a more free and independent way of traveling. Because of this, I asked myself whether the Western stereotype of Chinese tourists still fits the current behavior of Chinese travelers.  In this article I will first focus on the Western stereotyping of Chinese tourists and its countermovement, then I will dig deeper into the history of China to explain their touristic behavior and finally I will go into the current changes in behavior and the role of social media therein.

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The stereotype

Stereotypes can be defined as a socially shared set of beliefs about traits that are characteristics of members of a social category (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Once a stereotype is settled in many heads, it costs a lot of effort and energy to change it. Therefore, it is easier to rely on existing stereotypes than on creating new ones. This is also the case with Chinese tourists. Before I am going to explain the behavior of the ‘new’ Chinese tourists, I first focus on the Western stereotype. As I mentioned above, online there can be found a lot of negative stereotyping about Chinese tourists. The following Western set of beliefs results from the online sources named in the introduction:

• They travel all together in big groups
• The Chinese tourists want to see everything in a hurry
• They prefer an all-in packet
• They poop in public
• They spent a lot of money on shopping malls
• They burb, puke, and smack wherever they want
• They speak very little English
• They do not follow the rules
• Everywhere they come, they make 10,000 pictures
• They cut the lines by tourist attractions
• They speak very loudly. 

 

Many more negative beliefs can be found online. Take all these points together and we might call this behavior ‘uncivilized’.  This behavior also didn't go unnoticed within China itself. According to the Telegraph, in May 2013 former Vice-premier Wang Yang asked the Chinese citizens who are able to travel overseas to improve their behavior. He stressed that the behavior affected the overall image of China (The Guardian, 2013):

"They speak loudly in public, carve characters on tourist attractions, cross the road when the traffic lights are still red, spit anywhere and [carry out] some other uncivilized behavior. It damages the image of the Chinese people and has a very bad impact." 

Besides this offline reaction of Wang Yang, online there can also be found many examples that show that the Chinese themselves are ashamed of their fellow countryman. On YouTube, the video ‘How to be a Chinese tourist’ can be found. This video has the aim to show the behavior of Chinese tourists in France and to investigate where this behavior comes from. The video shows some examples that confirm the Western stereotype: the Chinese travel in big groups, they have 10 days for the whole of Europe, behave rudely to each other, pushing each other away in front of the Mona Lisa and spit and burp. Some online reactions from (former) fellow countryman are as follows:

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Countermovement

Besides all the negative reactions that confirm the Western stereotype of Chinese tourists, a lot of positive reactions arise in the video ‘How to be a Chinese tourist’, which defends the behavior of the Chinese tourists. The main argument that changes the view on Chinese tourists is that they really do not know how to behave in another country, because of their isolated history. A lot of first-time travelers are not used to have a big amount of money to spend.

Besides this, it is often mentioned in the reactions that the Western stereotype is based on the behavior of the ‘old’ generation tourists. This generation grew up in communist China and was very poor and learned no manners. Nowadays, China grows to a modernized society, but the ‘old generation’ has no idea how to behave in this way. This ‘old generation’ travelers take their behavior with them on vacation and it does not fit the Western standards. This causes the negative stereotypes. According to the reactions on the video, the ‘new’ Chinese generation is more polite and well-mannered, travels independent and is more aware of how to behave in another country. A women reacted under the YouTube video:

"Give them another 10 years, and you will see that bad manners disappear. This is after all the first era when mainland China are given passports to see the world.'

More and more online articles confirm this reaction. Their aim is to convince the reader that the behavior of the 'new' generation Chinese tourists is changing. For example the article: Chinese travelers are changing their travel behavior and a lot more similar articles can be found. It can be said that a countermovement has started to show the world that the behavior of the 'new' generation Chinese tourists nowadays is not so bad as the stereotype (based on the 'old' generation) suggests. 

In conclusion, two groups of travelers can be distinguished, namely the ‘old’ and ‘new’ generation of Chinese tourists. The behavior of the ‘old’ generation has led to the Western stereotype and the ‘new’ generation is paying the price for it. Why is it that these two generations differ so much in travel behavior? In the followoing, I briefly go into the history of China to have a better understanding of the differences between these two groups.

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A bit of Chinese history

Back in 1980, it was only possible for a select group of Chinese citizens to travel overseas. Every trip had to be approved by the government. Only official business trips were allowed. Since 1990, it became easier to obtain a travel visa, especially for group tours. The neighbor countries of China immediately saw opportunities and began to issue visas on arrival and leisure visas for tourists.

However, it was easier to obtain group visas than individual visas, because of the fear for illegal immigration. When a country issued a group visa, the tour operator was responsible for everyone to return to China. Therefore, the risk of Chinese citizens who stayed illegal in other countries reduced. While the neighbor countries of China acted according to the growing group of Chinese tourists, Western countries did not. They were too suspicious about the idea that the main group of Chinese tourists would not return to China after they obtained a visa. This stereotype of Chinese tourists persisted until after the Olympic Games in 2008 in Beijing.

After this big event, Western countries realized that there are Chinese citizens who can afford traveling and are not willing to stay illegally in Western countries. Since then, Western countries are more open to Chinese tourists (Jaffe, 2013). While in 2000 the number of overseas visits made by Chinese tourists was 10.5 million, the forecast for overseas visits in 2018 is 156 million in total (Telegraph, 2018). Despite the ever-growing group of Chinese tourists, not every Chinese citizen is able to travel across the borders. Only about 6% of the Chinese citizens had a valid passport in 2016 (Reed, 2016). 

As a result of the earlier difficulties in obtaining visas for Western countries, a lot of Chinese tourists for the first time now visit Western countries. This ‘old’ generation group is not used to a foreign language, they do not know other cultures and they feel not save outside the borders of China. For that reason, this group of tourists prefers organized group tours to feel more safe and secure together. Besides this, the group guide often speaks Mandarin (Jaffe, 2013). However, the next travel generation, which also can be referred to as the millennials, is more used to traveling. This ‘new’ group of travelers and how it is developing will be described below.

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The rise of the independent traveler 

Nowadays, Chinese millennials are the biggest group of travelers. According to Dragon Trail Interactive, a platform for Chinese outbound tourism, digital marketing, and travel marketing, 60% of the overseas Chinese travelers are millennials (see figure 1). These Chinese millennials are sharing a lot of information on social media (see figure 2). 

Millennials are the citizens who were born between 1980 and 2000. As it was before 1990 almost impossible to travel overseas, nowadays, an amount of 93% of this ‘new’ group considers traveling as an important part of their identity. Besides this, the group of millennials is likely to spend around 27% of their income on traveling (Dragon Trail, 2018). Figures from Dragon Trail show that traveling becomes more important for people from China than for people from the UK or USA (see figures 3 and 4).

Figure 4 shows that Chinese millennials are more likely to experience unique travel and adventure, and that they are willing to live like the locals do to learn about their particular culture. This behavior seems like the opposite in comparing to the ‘old’ generation of travelers who want to travel in groups. The group of independent travelers includes the wealthy millennials from the first and second-tier cities. The different city tiers imply different income levels, customer behaviors, and business opportunities. The first-tier cities are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, which are very likely to be the future global cities. The second-tier cities include Tianjin, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuhan, Xi’an, Shenyang, Chengdu, and Chongqing, which are also important for the Chinese economy (Quora, 2016). 

The online world is important for the ‘new’ generation travelers (see figure 2). They are more likely to use digital tools to plan their trip than the group travelers who want the tour operator to plan everything. Below, the importance of Chinese social media is dealt with in order to create a better understanding of why it has an influece on Chinese travel behavior. 

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Influence of social media on behavioral change

The Internet can be seen as the main infrastructure of globalization. However, the online world is also fed through globalization, because more and more online activities arise. Castells (2011) states in his book ‘The Rise of the Network Society’ that globalization shapes new forms of social structures. He argues that the world goes from an industrial society to a network society. It is a reshaping of society with more complex and not straightforward information flows.

An example of a new information flow is information sharing through the internet. This ‘new’ opportunity of communication is a driver of the behavioral change of the ‘new’ Chinese tourists. Social media plays an important role for the Chinese millennials when it comes to traveling. Especially WeChat and Weibo are important media (Dragon Trail, 2018). WeChat is the most popular social media app in China. It has almost 1 billion active users and 60% of the users are aged between 16 and 35. This fits the population of millennials, or in other words, ‘new tourists’.

47% of the millennial travelers obtain their travel information through their friends on WeChat. Besides, 48% of the Chinese millennials who are able to travel receive their travel information through WeChat subscription accounts. Besides WeChat as inspiration and information platform, flights can also be directly booked through WeChat, cars can be rented through WeChat, companies can send their Chinese customers a guide for driving rules or suggesting car routes through WeChat, and so on. Therefore WeChat is a multi-layered medium with different purposes (Dragon Trail, 2017). It consists of four layers, namely:

• Communication layer: Communication with friends and families
• Marketing layer: Organizations use the platform to market their goods and services
• Social layer: Inspiring friends through the ‘moments wall’ where you can show al your photos/videos
• Service layer: Users can buy and pay goods and services with WeChat.

Besides WeChat, also the social media Weibo is used for gathering travel information. This medium has 411 million monthly active users. Travelers can share their videos or life streams through Weibo. Two billion videos are watched daily on this medium. This platform is therefore mostly used as source of inspiration.

Both platforms have a big influence on the behavior of the ‘new’ Chinese travelers. The users of the platforms can connect with friends, family, celebrities and other people with an account. Through the online connection, the ‘new’ travelers can be familiar with how to book their trip, the culture of another country, the habits of another country, the foreign language, etc. They learn from other WeChat and Weibo users. The online platforms consist of all new information, the ‘old’ Chinese travel generation was not familiar with.

Not all the ‘old’ generation travelers will make use of the new network flows which result from the network society. Therefore, the reshaped society will be double-layer, which means that the ‘old’ and ‘new’ generations travelers live together in the same society. To conclude, social media is an important factor that created the behavioral change of the Chinese tourists. Therefore we can say that the online world (network society) is a driver of the behavioral change of the Chinese tourists. The new independent travelers know better how to behave in other countries and therefore do no longer fit the western stereotype of Chinese tourists anymore.

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Mismatch between stereotype and reality 

Stereotypes are stereotypes. But the stereotypes on Chinese tourists are now even more useless. The ‘new’ travel generation is a whole new group of travelers with other customs, wishes, and above all another social behavior than the ‘old’ generation travelers. Globalization and social media are the main components of the changing behavior of Chinese tourists. Through the rise of the Chinese independent travelers, it can be said that the Western stereotype of Chinese tourists does not fit reality at all. But as always, we should not forget that it is hard to change a stereotype.

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References

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity al large: cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press.

Castells, M. (2011). The rise of the network society. John Wiley & Sons.

Dragon Trail Interactive, 2017, How to reach Chinese independent travelers

Dragon Trail Interactive, 2018, Reaching the Chinese traveller online

Dragon Trail Interactive, 2017, China outbound travel and digital trends

Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological review, 102(1), 4.

Reed, 2016, Chinese extend lead as the world's biggest spenders on foreign travel

Jaffe, 2013, How the Chinese learned to embrace independent travel

Telegraph, 2013, China's new guide to 'civilised tourism'

Telegraph, 2018, The unstoppable rise of the Chinese traveller – where are they going and what does it mean for overtourism?

The Guardian, 2013, Chinese tourists warned over bad behaviour overseas

Quora, 2016, China's cities tier

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