Can inbound tourism help inland China?

With increasing significance of tourism in China, its impacts on the regional economic inequality has attracted continued research interest. While tourism is expected to play a leading role in regional development, spatial inequality of inbound tourism seems to be much greater than for that of the socio-economic variables, and international tourism appeared to reinforce the regional inequalities, and was in fact contributing to greater economic disparity between coastal and inland China. By utilising statistical data over two decades, this paper tracks the movement in the regional distribution of inbound tourism in China. It confirms the concern that with phenomenal growth of inbound tourism to China, considerable regional inequality has arisen in tourism in China. There is significant spatial inequality in the distribution of inbound tourism in China and its economic characteristics. International tourism in China is heavily concentrated in the coastal areas. When inland China attempts to promote tourism growth, their first task is to decide on the target market. It has been common to expect international visitors to generate the bulk of tourism income. However, inbound tourism has not been contributed in relative term to reducing the gap between the inland and eastern China. Inbound tourism still favours coastal areas of China, and so adds to the skew of economic activity in China in favour of coastal areas. That naturally raises the query of the extent to which China's inland region has benefited from the growth of inbound tourism to China.