Last year, Chinese tourists that visited the United States dumped a total of $26.9 billion according to a report by Xinhua, China’s state-run media.
This means that Chinese tourists spent on average $73.7 million each day of 2015 with nearly a third of that from shopping alone. China has long been a major consumer of luxury goods.
This is also impressive for a country where the GDP per capita was just under $8,000 in 2015. By comparison, the average annual income in the United States was just under $56,000 in 2015.
Zhao Ping, a researcher with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, explained:
“The increasing overseas spending can be attributed to the higher income of Chinese citizens. Japanese and Korean tourists’ overseas spending maintained a high growth rate of between 30 and 40 percent before the Japanese and South Korean per capita GDPs reached $10,000.
“China, with a per capita GDP of $8,000, is still in the period of high-speed growth, and the trend will continue.”
