One of questions that accompanies China’s development is, whether Europe will become it`s most wanted touristic destination. It is possible that in the next twenty or thirty years there will be large numbers of Chinese tourists in every important European touristic place. When we will see them, talk to them and visit some of them in their country mutual understanding and respect will emerge or become bigger. But before we start discussing abut touristic trends we should ask ourselves about our predictions about China in the first place.

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Martin Lipovšek, Gimnazija Ledina, Ljubljana, Slovenija

China has second biggest GDP in the World . With fast economic growth it will surely increase wealth and standard of living of its inhabitants even more. The Western world is well aware of China`s development. We can hear predictions that no later than in year 2050 it will become economically stronger than Europe. Even Slovenia has officially predicted that this century is very likely to be Asia’s century. According to text there will be a global manufacturing and major export centre. The prediction even says that by 2025 Europe will have lost the lead in science and technology and business sector .
There is, on the other hand, less predictions for Europe to become most wanted place by China`s people. There are however some good arguments who support this.

Firstly, Europe is the most touristic place in the World and therefore will probably attract biggest number of Chinese travellers also in the future. Europe has many beautiful natural and cultural monuments, places of interest (museums, operas, sport events, etc.). This is one of the reasons why is Europe the biggest touristic superpower. The numbers for the last three years show us that one of European countries, more specific: France was all the time the most visited international destination. In the year 2010 it had 18.07 million international visitors more than the second most visited tourist destination: USA and 22.97 million more international visitors than the third one: China. The data for year 2009 tell us that China had 50.9 million tourists, USA 54.9 million and top 5 European countries had 221.8 million tourists from all over the World . Obvious difference in proportions can be easily seen and so the Chinese, when they will be economically well stand, will probably go to the places that are now most visited.

Secondly, the China`s touristic trend is pointing in direction where Europe is in the centre. We must acknowledge that China`s number of tourists has doubled in the last five years. Last year more than 31 million Chinese travelled oversees and this numbers is expected to increase up to 100 million by 2020 . Nowadays, only 7 percent of Chinese are travelling to Europe, and 70 percent of them are travelling to neighbouring Hong Kong and Macao or to nearby gambling destinations such as Russia or Vietnam. However, Europe is very popular among those Chinese who have enough money to go to shopping to Europe. There are also predictions that masses of tourists who already visited cheap and close destinations will, when they will be rich enough, travel to new destinations, among which Europe has special place. The last fact in this argument is, that European Union is aware of its tourism potential and had already made visa agreements whit China so Chinese can travel easier to Europe than ten or twenty years ago.

Thirdly, one of the reasons why Chinese will travel to Europe is to learn about Western culture. Europe is definitely the roots of Western culture. In the age of colonization Europe spread its influence and culture over the World. Some countries, that are called Western, are almost alike Europe – United states of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand; others have still some European culture but are from certain reasons (economical, political) counted sometimes as western and sometimes not. These are some countries of South and Middle America (depends which source you take), South Africa and Israel. As we can see, the vast area in the World is tagged as West and Europe is its roots. Chinese who do not travel just for fun and souvenirs will therefore rather go to Europe than let us say Canada to better understand history – roots of West. Going to the places where the roots are is a common behaviour of people, especially tourists. For example, many Christian believers go to Jerusalem to seek and understand how Chritianity started. Quite the same is with Muslim religion and Meka. In the end also Greece with Athens is very popular place, because there people can see roots of Europe.

Fifth, Europe has significant historical importance in China. Many important Chinese events in history were correlated to Europe. From the times of Marco Polo there were cultural and trade connections between those two territories. Later on, Europe managed to become powerful and forced China to become its raw material base. This of course changed the China`s history. Later on we know that First and Second World War had influence on China. The idea of Communism that followed had also source in Europe. Only later on Europe`s influence was not as important as America’s, and Russian’s (Soviet’s). After this historical brief, one can be sure that Chinese people could find causes for their own history events in Europe. And therefore they will go to Europe in order to see them. There are many examples how people go to distant places that influenced their history. Many Europeans for example travel to Rome, because the roman civilisation had a great influence on later Europe. Also many people from Common Wealth travel to England because it was one of important factors in their history.  
Lastly, part of tourists will come simply because Europe is fancy and has many interesting things for shopping. These tourists probably do not care so much about culture and understanding but rather think how nice Swatch watches they will have. We can read in newspapers  that nowadays some of Chinese tourists are not interested in European culture but they travel to Europe mostly to get expensive souvenirs.

On the other hand we must acknowledge that all the arguments above are based on predictions. The World surely will change, but we can`t know for sure how will it change. By the time when China will have higher standard many things can change. In that time Europe may not be the most touristic and most popular place any more. Maybe BRICK (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries and Middle East will take all the travellers. Maybe even China will not economically grow so well but will start to decline and therefore have lower standard and touristic migration.

In the end the question of tolerance stays still open. But, through the essay we heard arguments that speak for greater tolerance. Is it common sense that when the masses of Chinese will come to Europe and learn about it, majority of them will have better understanding and therefore less fear of unknown. At the same time also Europeans will know better Chinese and will have less fear of unknown, as well. And exactly fear of unknown causes discrimination and intolerance.  
To conclude, the trends show that China tourist migrations will greatly increase and may be headed towards Europe. And with more connections and close interaction both will live in better understanding, respect and tolerance.