{"id":131299,"date":"2025-10-19T03:12:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T03:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131299\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T03:12:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T03:12:24","slug":"the-great-mall-how-china-is-turning-foreign-tourists-into-shoppers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131299\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Mall: how China is turning foreign tourists into shoppers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Foreign tourists in China are increasingly drawn to shopping, said Steven Zhao, CEO of China Highlights, a travel agency that organises tours of the country.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cThey\u2019ll buy drones and take them back home,\u201d he said, noting the trend has become \u201cmore obvious\u201d over the past two years \u2013 especially among Middle Eastern travellers \u2013 as China produces an outsized share of the global total, with some devices small enough to fit in the hand.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cDrone prices are cheap and the choices are numerous,\u201d he said, referring to products available on the Chinese market.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/economy\/china-economy\/article\/3326978\/here-are-5-ways-enter-china-without-visa-land-sea-or-air?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Relaxed visa policies<\/a> could make China an even stronger draw for overseas shoppers. Inbound tourism revenue is likely to rise to 18 per cent of the overall travel market in five years, up from the current 11 per cent, according to a Morgan Stanley research note on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cShopping will become an increasingly significant reason for inbound travellers to visit China, especially considering the higher trade barriers globally\u201d, one of the analysts told the Post, referring to tariffs and other restrictions that have raised prices in many parts of the world.<\/p>\n<p>Morgan Stanley Research highlighted China\u2019s value-added tax (VAT) refunds for tourists as a driver of expected growth. The initiative was <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/economy\/china-economy\/article\/3316119\/how-can-you-claim-tax-refunds-tourist-china?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">liberalised this year<\/a> to stimulate the domestic economy, allowing visitors to receive cash that they can spend elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Foreign tourists in China are increasingly drawn to shopping, said Steven Zhao, CEO of China Highlights, a travel&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,381,78800,52735,78799,11170,179,18,78802,2220,78798,4202,19,17,78801,64286,3906,10522,797,78803],"class_list":{"0":"post-131299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-china-highlights","11":"tag-china-trading-desk","12":"tag-christelle-denis","13":"tag-drones","14":"tag-economy","15":"tag-eire","16":"tag-foreign-tourists","17":"tag-france","18":"tag-hainan-free-trade-port","19":"tag-hong-kong","20":"tag-ie","21":"tag-ireland","22":"tag-middle-eastern-travellers","23":"tag-ministry-of-finance","24":"tag-morgan-stanley","25":"tag-shenzhen","26":"tag-shopping","27":"tag-steven-zhao"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}