Mentioning the vastly increased numbers of Chinese outbound tourists in 2005, Eurail Group Company Chinese representative office's Managing Director Gu Jian said to reporters, "Europe did not feel anything about 'China threat'. All we know is that many small and big cities need to provide many more automatic teller services so Chinese tourists can withdraw cash with their China UnionPay cards."

According to statistics, in 2005, Chinese outbound tourists spent an average of US$235 million per month with 45,000 transactions, ranking first amongst all countries; Chinese outbound tourists' average purchase spending tops the world at US$987 per capita.

World Travel and Tourism Council Executive Committee report mentions that Chinese tourists have joined the world's top five largest tourism groups and sooner or later will overtake all other countries to become the world's biggest tourism spenders.

According to a report by Global Refund formed of 36 countries of statistics collected from September 2004 to September 2005, Chinese tourists spent the most money in Germany, amongst all European countries, as much as US$60 million, followed by Italy, Britain, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland.

World Tourism Organization predicts that 15 years later, China's outbound tourists would exceed 100 million. In the 1970's and 1980's, world travel agencies count upon Japan, followed by Korea, as their main Asian country customers. But at present, China has already replaced Japan as Asia's number one outbound travel market.

(Chinanews.cn December 27, 2005)