ABSTRACT
Introduction The continual loosening of Chinese governmental restrictions on its citizens’ travel since the inauguration of the open door policy in the late 1970s presents current generations of Chinese with unaccustomed opportunities to travel abroad, while the rapid growth of the Chinese economy has meant that at least a portion of the Chinese population is acquiring the nancial means, and the global outlook, to undertake international travel. Consequently, the past two decades have seen a massive inux of Chinese tourists to many of the far-ung popular tourism destinations of the world as the People’s Republic of China (PRC or “mainland China”) has become the world’s largest source market for international tourists (see Chapter 23, this volume).
