| There was an obscure cute SciFi novel from 1975 with the KGB approaching the CIA for help in dealing with all the Chinese tourists who just had to visit Russia - the home of communism - and never spent a cent while loudly displaying the superiority of their Chinese products. So of course I couldn't resist this article from Russia! The book's author: Dallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds Title: "Tomorrow might be different". The last few paragraphs of the book: "Mr. Edwards," he said incisively, "to use an old Americanism, let's face it. The cold war is over between us. Not in an Armageddon, not in a Gotterdammerung of guided missiles and H-Bombs, but in the face of a problem common to both." |
On February 1, St. Petersburg tour operators called a press conference to discuss a popular but largely misunderstood subject: the impact of Chinese tourism on the Russian economy. They claimed that the growing wave of Chinese tourists brings virtually no revenue to Russia and harms the local tourism industry. And government officials ignore the problem, happily reporting impressive statistics on Chinese tourism to their higher-ups.
As a rule, Chinese visitors take a seven- to nine-day tour that usually includes both Moscow and St. Petersburg. They visit the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Kremlin in Moscow, focusing on the palaces’ interior decorations rather than on the works of art and artifacts that they display. Russia’s major attractions fit the Chinese worldview quite well—after all, they also have a walled palatial complex in the middle of their nation’s capital.
Generally speaking, it is China’s lower middle class that sets its sights on Russia. Sixty-three percent of Chinese tourists are women, and 45 percent are over fifty. Most tourists come with a group. There are very few individual travelers because that requires a visa, while group travelers can enter visa-free. Additionally, the Chinese are still afraid to visit Russia without a group leader and an interpreter, because they usually don’t speak foreign languages. And Chinese websites are rife with horror stories of Chinese tourists who were deceived or robbed by Russian police officers, skinheads, or tour guides.
Most of the money that Chinese tourists leave in Russia goes to jewelry and souvenir stores. Profit margins average 200–300 percent here, but for some items—for example, fake amber—they can be 1,000 percent or more. Still, tourists rarely make such expensive purchases. They usually buy simple “amber” crafts and inexpensive golden jewelry. Often, a few copies of the same objects are bought as gifts for one’s wife, mistress, relatives, or co-workers.