From The Council of Foreign Relations:
Sum it all up though, and the number of tourists travelling abroad in 2014 looks to have increased by about 10 percent (from 100 to 110 million or so) in line with past growth. Look at this Goldman Report.* With an increase in nominal spending per tourist it is possible to imagine tourism growth of say 20 percent. Not 80 percent. 2015 seems similar. Visits to Hong Kong and Macau fell.
So what is going on in the balance of payments (BoP) data? No doubt many things. China seems to have revised its methodology for “counting” tourism in the balance of payments in some way, leading to a jump in both imports and exports in 2014. Tourism imports rose by a giant $100 billion in 2014 (with a slowing economy) after growing by $40 billion in 2013. Tourism exports were adjusted up too, but not by nearly as much.
The result is a data series that doesn’t quite map to other indicators of tourism, as well as an important break in the data. And of course it is also the case that expectations about the course of China’s currency against the dollar started to change in 2014, strengthening incentives for disguised outflows.
