2.
Our relations with China have blossomed, and tourism is one of the fruits. What
would the gold diggers who hounded the Chinese at Lambing Flat in the last century say
if they could see the Australian tourists pouring into China? Here are the figures, never
before made public, of tourism into China into 1982:
The tourists in China (excluding overseas Chinese) came from these countries:
41,000 (including Brit. passport holders living in
Hong Kong)
1.
Japan
245,000
نه
United States
145,000
3.
Australia
53,000
4.
*
U.K.
5.
Philippines
33,000
6.
Singapore
22,000
) France
21,000
7.
)
) West Germany
21,000
-
Australia ranks third as the source of tourists in China. Moreover our tourism has
risen by a third in the space of one year, a year of recession. Nor does our tourist tally
include those numerous Australians who do not yet hold Australian passports. We are, of
all nations, the great tourist nation in China, on a per capita basis. An Australian is five
times as likely as an American to visit China, and I would think but figures are
incomplete an Australian is twenty times as likely as a European to visit China. Of
course you may say that tourism from here to China is cheap but in fact it is rather
expensive. Nonetheless, those Australians who tour China return, impressed, deeply
impressed, even if they are pleased in part by things they would not like in their own
society: automatic preference for foreigners in trains, theatres and cafes.
Chinese tourism in Australia, on the other hand, is on a small scale, and will remain
insignificant. And yet Chinese culture in all its richness is here: witness the astonishing