Abstrakt
The socioeconomic importance of tourism is growing. At the international level such importance is reflected in international politics.
This contribution points right to the interplay of international tourism and international politics - i.e., how international tourism affects international political system. Chinese tourism represents an appropriate case study, as it has been used regularly by Chinese government to achieve its goals in foreign policy.
For instance, it is shown that the approved destination status (ADS) scheme, which can be described as a main tool for regulating Chinese outbound tourism, serves as an exercise of hard power. Nowadays, China is the most important tourist-generating country, therefore, to obtain and maintain ADS with the awareness of the importance of Chinese outbound tourism, the other states must refrain from any criticism of the state of human rights and questioning the One-China policy.
Alongside the use of other outbound tourism tools to exercise hard power and to strengthen soft power, inbound tourism is also employed for China's foreign policy goals. This bears several policy implications for Central European countries where Chinese tourism exhibits growing tendencies.