New trends in tourism cooperation between China and ASEAN: observation and comments

Abstract

Tourism is increasingly becoming an indispensable component of national economy in all the economies of the region. Under the leadership and coordination of ASEAN Secretariat, a variety of Southeast Asian tourism products were integrated as a package and have been actively promoted by ASEAN countries. The ASEAN Tourism Forum has played an important role in this regard as a dialogue and cooperation platform within the region. In the meantime, since the framework of ASEAN + 3 was formed in late 1990s, a new regional mechanism named ASEAN + 3 Tourism Organisation Forum has gradually grown into importance and become the most important vehicle in tourism cooperation between ASEAN and three major economies of East Asia. The past decade saw the healthy development of ASEAN tourism, and ASEAN has made rapid progress in exploring the Chinese mainland tourist market. China has been ranked as the 2nd top tourism partner of ASEAN over the past six years if ASEAN members were excluded, and each year around 3.2 million Chinese tourists would visit the region. As the history of Chinese tourism in Southeast Asia is relatively short, the so-called "Southeast Asian Tour" for the mainland Chinese citizens has mainly concentrated in a number of ASEAN countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. China's outbound tourism has been growing rapidly since 1988. According to the annual statistics issued by China's National Tourism Administration in Beijing, while 2000 saw more than 10 million Chinese tourists traveling overseas, it only took three years for China to reach the target of 20 million tourist outflows in 2003, when 20.22 million were recorded. The annual growth rate has been maintained at two digital numbers since 2000 with an average increase by nearly 4 million tourists. Of the top ten destinations overseas for Chinese tourists, four are from ASEAN countries. ASEAN tourists have on the other hand become one of China's key tourist sending markets. Figures from the Chinese authorities show that ASEAN tourist arrivals grew by 52.6 percent on a year-on-year basis to 2.99 million in 2004, which was nearly 18 percent of the total foreign tourist arrivals. As part of the efforts to facilitate the growth of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Zone, Chinese tourism authorities regularly organised seminars and workshops on the bilateral collaborations and invited tourism ministers from ASEAN to attend the meetings. At local government level, encouraging trend in the China-ASEAN tourism collaboration was recently seen in southwest China provinces. In Guangxi province, for instance, local government has recently built up the first expressway linking its capital Nanning to Hanoi of Vietnam. In Yunnan, collaborating with its ASEAN partners, the local government is expanding and improving its tourism sources with an emphasis on the cross-border speedboat tour along the Lancang - Mekong River. A new speedboat tour route ranging from Yunnan's Jinghong.