• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.400-416
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• 2010

China's inbound tourism became one of the key drivers for economic growth with open-door policy in 1978 and has experienced the fast growth over the past three decades. In 2008, China, as one of the world's leading tourist destinations, is ranked the 4th globally in the number of inbound overnight tourists. Based on China tourism statistics, this paper aims to examine the growth of inbound tourist flows at the national level and the changing spatial distribution by comparing between 1995 and 2008 at the regional level (31 province-level regions) in China. In particular, the spatial distributions of tourist flows from the 6 main generating countries (South Korea, Japan, Singapore, U.S.A., Germany, and Russia) are more concretely analyzed. For five countries except Russia, with slight differences by country, while the eastern area of China is still the most popular destination and western part remains the least visited area, the central part is witnessing the increasing popularity. Russia shows an obvious difference, presenting the spatial pattern that tourist flows are mainly concentrated in the northern and the most southern part of China. This paper helps to understand the dynamics of China's regional changes from an inbound tourism perspective.