The Chinese do not seem to have missed the Eiffel Tower that much. Although the population is once again allowed to travel freely, only a meager five percent of the pre-Covid tourist numbers visited France’s capital in the first two months of this year.
This is painful because tourists from China bring in a lot of money: In 2019, they spent 250 billion US dollars on international travel. Amelie Richter analyzes the reasons for the lack of tourists. She also reports on the most popular travel dreams in the People’s Republic and how Russia, of all places, wants to become an attractive alternative to Europe.
After seven years of diplomatic silence, Iran and Saudi Arabia have now resumed bilateral relations – a negotiation success on Beijing’s part. The People’s Republic has been active in the region for a long time and forged many strategic partnerships and built trust in the region. As a result, it has now become a reputable diplomatic player in the Middle East. Frank Sieren analyzes how power structures are changing.
Today, China Perspective takes you on a tour of Beijing. How is the former red-light district of the Eight Great Hutongs connected to Germany, where exactly was Tank Man standing in the iconic photo and why are monks in a Beijing temple might be secretly getting rich? Find out.
The first spring sun glistens on the Seine – and along its banks, there is something that has not been seen in this form since the pandemic: Tour buses are parked one after the other. In front of the pier for sightseeing boats, Chinese tourist groups are waiting. It seems they are back: The travelers from the People’s Republic.
But it is not what it seems: In the first two months of the year, Paris airports recorded only around 3,200 arrivals from China, as the city’s tourism office told Table.Media. This is around 95 percent less than in 2019, before the pandemic. Even in March, there was still no wave of travelers, explained the Paris tourism office.
While China has announced that it will also make it easier to obtain tourist visas, the other way around is still difficult. Until now, Germany, for example, has only issued business visas, but tourists are not yet able to visit the country again, travel industry sources confirm. A reason for this is that the German consulates in China are understaffed to process large numbers of visa applications.
According to the German Foreign Office, visa issuance is reciprocal. With China’s easing of restrictions on German tourists who wish to travel to China, the German side will also grant tourist visas to Chinese again. More than 10,000 Schengen visas have already been issued in China since the beginning of the year. The application centers in Canton, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenyang have already reopened. The center in Chengdu is also expected to open on Thursday. However, the number of appointments available before the pandemic has not yet been reached.
Travel agencies hope that the tourism wave from China will gain significant momentum after the Easter holidays. However, in order to remain attractive as a travel destination for the Chinese market, Europe will have to try a little harder than before, says Wolfgang Georg Arlt, head of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute (COTRI), which examines travel trends to and from the People’s Republic. “The demands of Chinese tourists have changed in the times of the pandemic,” Arlt explains. Group tour packages – like “five countries in six days” – are at best only an option for visitors who have never been to Europe before. But even here, there are higher demands for sustainability or “special experiences” nowadays.
The photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, which everyone has, is no longer in demand, says Arlt. Chinese tourists would rather visit smaller cities and the countryside and really explore them. The tourism expert sees this as a great opportunity for places that were previously not at the top of the wish list of travel destinations. Creative concepts are needed, he says.
“Instead of going shopping, the money is being spent on activities.” Fine dining, for example, is currently very much in vogue, he says. “There are a lot of foodies who want to taste local delicacies above all else,” Arlt says. So in France, the dining-and-spa combo in the Champagne region could soon be more interesting as an event than the capital with its world-famous sights.
Outdoor activities are also gaining in popularity, explains Arlt. However, ordinary camping is less in demand. “Glamping“, i.e. camping with glamour, is the order of the day. “And Chinese tourists also like to be entertained at the campsite in the evening. A bit like in a resort.”
To top it off, Europe has also received big competition from the domestic market in China. “Since the pandemic, it is socially more accepted not to leave the country for vacation and spend a lot of money in China,” says Arlt.
However, how many tourists will arrive from the People’s Republic this year remains uncertain. Olivier Ponti of the market research institute ForwardKeys remains cautious: “There’s still a long way to go to full recovery,” Ponti told Reuters. This is because there are still a number of hurdles. For example, a staff shortage at the airlines and the approval process for flight routes are slowing down the expansion of flight capacities. Chinese citizens are waiting a long time for passports. Flights are also still expensive, explains Ray Chen, manager of the Chinese online travel portal Trip.com.
According to Ralf Ostendorf of the Berlin tourism agency VisitBerlin, there is currently one flight a week to China from the German capital. There had been negotiations on expanding air traffic between Germany and China before the pandemic, but these were interrupted because of Covid, he said. “It is important that these negotiations are resumed,” Ostendorf stressed. This did not happen, so far, because of political tensions caused by Russia’s war against Ukraine. “For tourism and the economy to function again, these direct flights are important for Berlin and Germany.”
Trip.com expects a rapid increase in international flights from China in the coming months. From the current 15 to 20 percent of pre-pandemic levels, capacity will increase to 50 percent by the end of June, it expects. People want to travel, demand is high.
Chinese tourists, who are known to be big spenders, remain an important economic factor. “The return of Chinese tourists will be felt here in Berlin, in all European countries and throughout the world,” said the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Zurab Pololikashvili, at the ITB industry trade show in early March. For example, vacationers from the People’s Republic had spent more than 250 billion US dollars on international travel in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
A country that is relying more on Chinese tourists this year than before: Russia. According to the Association of Tour Operators in Russia, the number of foreign tourists collapsed by 96 percent after Moscow invaded Ukraine. Russian travel agencies therefore have high hopes that Chinese tourists could be a permanent solution, Russian-language Current Time TV reported.
According to the report, Russia’s tourism industry is shifting its focus to the Chinese market: Major hotel chains are offering basic Mandarin training for their staff and adapting their breakfast buffets to Chinese preferences. With Reuters
For the first time after years of conflict, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran spoke on the phone again on Thursday. At the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Hussein Amirabdollahian and Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud exchanged greetings, the state media of both countries reported. During the conversation, they reportedly also discussed a planned ministerial meeting. The fact that the two countries are re-establishing bilateral relations after seven years of diplomatic standstill is a negotiating success for Beijing, one that is changing the balance of power in the Middle East.
The United States certainly continues to play an important role. And Russia also has close ties to the region’s rulers. But now Beijing is also joining the fray. Iran’s military adviser Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi even expresses the hope that “the post-American era in the Persian Gulf region has begun.” He probably goes too far with this assessment. The US television station CNN describes the developments more aptly: “China has shattered the assumption of US dominance in the Middle East.”
The US Wall Street Journal magazine calls it “a new chapter in competition between Beijing and Washington” China’s success undermines “the US contention that a US-led rules based order is the only responsible choice governments can make, and the only way to advance security,” Jon Alterman, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, summarizes the process.
The deal shows that Saudi Arabia “don’t trust Washington to have their back,” Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), also emphasizes. As a result, “China is becoming the major-domo of Middle Eastern power politics”.
At the same time, however, Riyadh is leaving the door open to its biggest arms supplier: Just hours before the Saudi-Iran agreement was announced, Saudi Arabia had even floated the United States as a broker for relations with Israel. The Saudi proposal included security guarantees from the United States, help in developing a civilian nuclear program, and lighter restrictions on US arms deals with Riyadh.
But no longer at any cost, as US President Joe Biden already found out. After his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in mid-2022, Saudi Arabia-dominated OPEC+ cut oil production. Biden, on the other hand, wanted OPEC to produce more and thus lower oil prices. This is how he wanted to take the pressure off the US economy. Instead, the development played into Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s hands.
Biden’s second setback was when Riyadh abstained from the recent UN resolution against Putin’s Ukraine war, as did China and India. The Saudis have not forgotten that the US “hesitated” after the 2019 unmanned aerial attacks on Saudi Arabia against oil tankers and oil facilities, explained Eyal Zisser, Vice Rector of Tel Aviv University.
Furthermore, the US State Department removed the Iranian-backed Houthi movement from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2021. For years before the ceasefire in April 2022, they fired missiles and suicide drones at Saudi Arabia.
But Beijing decided long before this development to play a more neutral role in the region. Beijing claims – for whatever reason – that China has no political interests in the region. Yet 40 percent of its gas and oil imports come from the region. The People’s Republic had very close ties with Iran. The United States has regarded Iran as hostile since the 1979 raid on the US Embassy in Tehran and the subsequent 444-day hostage situation involving more than 50 diplomats.
The Chinese already managed to defuse this confrontation in 2015 when, together with the Europeans, they convinced then US President Barack Obama to lift sanctions against Iran. At the time, German Foreign Minister and current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Chinese counterpart at the time, Wang Yi, played a key role. Diplomacy czar Wang Yi has now also negotiated the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
After the joint European-Chinese success, China’s diplomats then set out alone. One important step: The strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia in 2016, following Algeria, Egypt and Qatar (2014), Iraq (2015), Morocco and the United Arab Emirates (2016). Then in 2018, Oman and Kuwait.
In December 2022, China and Arab countries decided to cooperate in the strategically important satellite navigation, as a foundation for future cooperation in the space sector. As of January 2023, 20 Arab countries have signed cooperation agreements under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In late 2022, during Xi Jinping’s visit, relations between Riyadh and Beijing were upgraded to a Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership.
So trust in the region was now so great that China did not have to offer itself as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia – instead, the Saudis requested Xi’s help in December 2022. China’s President then invited Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Beijing in February and also agreed to closer economic ties.
After five days of intense negotiations, the breakthrough came on March 10. Chinese observers see Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement also as an indicator to Putin that Beijing is not dependent on his oil and gas. Saudi Arabia is China’s largest oil supplier and Putin’s biggest competitor. Now the chances for peace in Yemen, where Riyadh and Tehran have been waging a proxy war for eight years with more than 400,000 casualties already, are also rising: Tehran supports the Houthi rebels. Riyadh supports the government.
The Biden administration grudgingly welcomed the agreement, but immediately drew a new red line. It was okay as long as a deal did not involve “military and technological cooperation,” a senior US official told the portal Axios.
The question now is whether Saudi Arabia is still willing to accept such US demands. The admission of the Saudis to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is already being discussed, could be a test of power. Its members include China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. So far, Iran has opposed the idea. This could now change.
Flower carpet against karst cones: The landscape near Guiyang is known for its picturesque hills. But in the springtime, there is another highlight. The cherry grove in the Gui’an New Area is around 1,600 hectares in size and attracts flocks of tourists for the short duration of its bloom.
The Chinese do not seem to have missed the Eiffel Tower that much. Although the population is once again allowed to travel freely, only a meager five percent of the pre-Covid tourist numbers visited France’s capital in the first two months of this year.
This is painful because tourists from China bring in a lot of money: In 2019, they spent 250 billion US dollars on international travel. Amelie Richter analyzes the reasons for the lack of tourists. She also reports on the most popular travel dreams in the People’s Republic and how Russia, of all places, wants to become an attractive alternative to Europe.
After seven years of diplomatic silence, Iran and Saudi Arabia have now resumed bilateral relations – a negotiation success on Beijing’s part. The People’s Republic has been active in the region for a long time and forged many strategic partnerships and built trust in the region. As a result, it has now become a reputable diplomatic player in the Middle East. Frank Sieren analyzes how power structures are changing.
Today, China Perspective takes you on a tour of Beijing. How is the former red-light district of the Eight Great Hutongs connected to Germany, where exactly was Tank Man standing in the iconic photo and why are monks in a Beijing temple might be secretly getting rich? Find out.
The first spring sun glistens on the Seine – and along its banks, there is something that has not been seen in this form since the pandemic: Tour buses are parked one after the other. In front of the pier for sightseeing boats, Chinese tourist groups are waiting. It seems they are back: The travelers from the People’s Republic.
But it is not what it seems: In the first two months of the year, Paris airports recorded only around 3,200 arrivals from China, as the city’s tourism office told Table.Media. This is around 95 percent less than in 2019, before the pandemic. Even in March, there was still no wave of travelers, explained the Paris tourism office.
While China has announced that it will also make it easier to obtain tourist visas, the other way around is still difficult. Until now, Germany, for example, has only issued business visas, but tourists are not yet able to visit the country again, travel industry sources confirm. A reason for this is that the German consulates in China are understaffed to process large numbers of visa applications.
According to the German Foreign Office, visa issuance is reciprocal. With China’s easing of restrictions on German tourists who wish to travel to China, the German side will also grant tourist visas to Chinese again. More than 10,000 Schengen visas have already been issued in China since the beginning of the year. The application centers in Canton, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenyang have already reopened. The center in Chengdu is also expected to open on Thursday. However, the number of appointments available before the pandemic has not yet been reached.
Travel agencies hope that the tourism wave from China will gain significant momentum after the Easter holidays. However, in order to remain attractive as a travel destination for the Chinese market, Europe will have to try a little harder than before, says Wolfgang Georg Arlt, head of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute (COTRI), which examines travel trends to and from the People’s Republic. “The demands of Chinese tourists have changed in the times of the pandemic,” Arlt explains. Group tour packages – like “five countries in six days” – are at best only an option for visitors who have never been to Europe before. But even here, there are higher demands for sustainability or “special experiences” nowadays.
The photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, which everyone has, is no longer in demand, says Arlt. Chinese tourists would rather visit smaller cities and the countryside and really explore them. The tourism expert sees this as a great opportunity for places that were previously not at the top of the wish list of travel destinations. Creative concepts are needed, he says.
“Instead of going shopping, the money is being spent on activities.” Fine dining, for example, is currently very much in vogue, he says. “There are a lot of foodies who want to taste local delicacies above all else,” Arlt says. So in France, the dining-and-spa combo in the Champagne region could soon be more interesting as an event than the capital with its world-famous sights.
Outdoor activities are also gaining in popularity, explains Arlt. However, ordinary camping is less in demand. “Glamping“, i.e. camping with glamour, is the order of the day. “And Chinese tourists also like to be entertained at the campsite in the evening. A bit like in a resort.”
To top it off, Europe has also received big competition from the domestic market in China. “Since the pandemic, it is socially more accepted not to leave the country for vacation and spend a lot of money in China,” says Arlt.
However, how many tourists will arrive from the People’s Republic this year remains uncertain. Olivier Ponti of the market research institute ForwardKeys remains cautious: “There’s still a long way to go to full recovery,” Ponti told Reuters. This is because there are still a number of hurdles. For example, a staff shortage at the airlines and the approval process for flight routes are slowing down the expansion of flight capacities. Chinese citizens are waiting a long time for passports. Flights are also still expensive, explains Ray Chen, manager of the Chinese online travel portal Trip.com.
According to Ralf Ostendorf of the Berlin tourism agency VisitBerlin, there is currently one flight a week to China from the German capital. There had been negotiations on expanding air traffic between Germany and China before the pandemic, but these were interrupted because of Covid, he said. “It is important that these negotiations are resumed,” Ostendorf stressed. This did not happen, so far, because of political tensions caused by Russia’s war against Ukraine. “For tourism and the economy to function again, these direct flights are important for Berlin and Germany.”
Trip.com expects a rapid increase in international flights from China in the coming months. From the current 15 to 20 percent of pre-pandemic levels, capacity will increase to 50 percent by the end of June, it expects. People want to travel, demand is high.
Chinese tourists, who are known to be big spenders, remain an important economic factor. “The return of Chinese tourists will be felt here in Berlin, in all European countries and throughout the world,” said the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Zurab Pololikashvili, at the ITB industry trade show in early March. For example, vacationers from the People’s Republic had spent more than 250 billion US dollars on international travel in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
A country that is relying more on Chinese tourists this year than before: Russia. According to the Association of Tour Operators in Russia, the number of foreign tourists collapsed by 96 percent after Moscow invaded Ukraine. Russian travel agencies therefore have high hopes that Chinese tourists could be a permanent solution, Russian-language Current Time TV reported.
According to the report, Russia’s tourism industry is shifting its focus to the Chinese market: Major hotel chains are offering basic Mandarin training for their staff and adapting their breakfast buffets to Chinese preferences. With Reuters
For the first time after years of conflict, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran spoke on the phone again on Thursday. At the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Hussein Amirabdollahian and Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud exchanged greetings, the state media of both countries reported. During the conversation, they reportedly also discussed a planned ministerial meeting. The fact that the two countries are re-establishing bilateral relations after seven years of diplomatic standstill is a negotiating success for Beijing, one that is changing the balance of power in the Middle East.
The United States certainly continues to play an important role. And Russia also has close ties to the region’s rulers. But now Beijing is also joining the fray. Iran’s military adviser Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi even expresses the hope that “the post-American era in the Persian Gulf region has begun.” He probably goes too far with this assessment. The US television station CNN describes the developments more aptly: “China has shattered the assumption of US dominance in the Middle East.”
The US Wall Street Journal magazine calls it “a new chapter in competition between Beijing and Washington” China’s success undermines “the US contention that a US-led rules based order is the only responsible choice governments can make, and the only way to advance security,” Jon Alterman, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, summarizes the process.
The deal shows that Saudi Arabia “don’t trust Washington to have their back,” Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), also emphasizes. As a result, “China is becoming the major-domo of Middle Eastern power politics”.
At the same time, however, Riyadh is leaving the door open to its biggest arms supplier: Just hours before the Saudi-Iran agreement was announced, Saudi Arabia had even floated the United States as a broker for relations with Israel. The Saudi proposal included security guarantees from the United States, help in developing a civilian nuclear program, and lighter restrictions on US arms deals with Riyadh.
But no longer at any cost, as US President Joe Biden already found out. After his meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in mid-2022, Saudi Arabia-dominated OPEC+ cut oil production. Biden, on the other hand, wanted OPEC to produce more and thus lower oil prices. This is how he wanted to take the pressure off the US economy. Instead, the development played into Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s hands.
Biden’s second setback was when Riyadh abstained from the recent UN resolution against Putin’s Ukraine war, as did China and India. The Saudis have not forgotten that the US “hesitated” after the 2019 unmanned aerial attacks on Saudi Arabia against oil tankers and oil facilities, explained Eyal Zisser, Vice Rector of Tel Aviv University.
Furthermore, the US State Department removed the Iranian-backed Houthi movement from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2021. For years before the ceasefire in April 2022, they fired missiles and suicide drones at Saudi Arabia.
But Beijing decided long before this development to play a more neutral role in the region. Beijing claims – for whatever reason – that China has no political interests in the region. Yet 40 percent of its gas and oil imports come from the region. The People’s Republic had very close ties with Iran. The United States has regarded Iran as hostile since the 1979 raid on the US Embassy in Tehran and the subsequent 444-day hostage situation involving more than 50 diplomats.
The Chinese already managed to defuse this confrontation in 2015 when, together with the Europeans, they convinced then US President Barack Obama to lift sanctions against Iran. At the time, German Foreign Minister and current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Chinese counterpart at the time, Wang Yi, played a key role. Diplomacy czar Wang Yi has now also negotiated the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
After the joint European-Chinese success, China’s diplomats then set out alone. One important step: The strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia in 2016, following Algeria, Egypt and Qatar (2014), Iraq (2015), Morocco and the United Arab Emirates (2016). Then in 2018, Oman and Kuwait.
In December 2022, China and Arab countries decided to cooperate in the strategically important satellite navigation, as a foundation for future cooperation in the space sector. As of January 2023, 20 Arab countries have signed cooperation agreements under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In late 2022, during Xi Jinping’s visit, relations between Riyadh and Beijing were upgraded to a Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership.
So trust in the region was now so great that China did not have to offer itself as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia – instead, the Saudis requested Xi’s help in December 2022. China’s President then invited Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Beijing in February and also agreed to closer economic ties.
After five days of intense negotiations, the breakthrough came on March 10. Chinese observers see Saudi Arabia’s rapprochement also as an indicator to Putin that Beijing is not dependent on his oil and gas. Saudi Arabia is China’s largest oil supplier and Putin’s biggest competitor. Now the chances for peace in Yemen, where Riyadh and Tehran have been waging a proxy war for eight years with more than 400,000 casualties already, are also rising: Tehran supports the Houthi rebels. Riyadh supports the government.
The Biden administration grudgingly welcomed the agreement, but immediately drew a new red line. It was okay as long as a deal did not involve “military and technological cooperation,” a senior US official told the portal Axios.
The question now is whether Saudi Arabia is still willing to accept such US demands. The admission of the Saudis to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is already being discussed, could be a test of power. Its members include China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. So far, Iran has opposed the idea. This could now change.
Flower carpet against karst cones: The landscape near Guiyang is known for its picturesque hills. But in the springtime, there is another highlight. The cherry grove in the Gui’an New Area is around 1,600 hectares in size and attracts flocks of tourists for the short duration of its bloom.
