, Columnist
To Understand China's Growth, Look at Its Tourists
The country's consumers are flexing muscles abroad. Leisure travel will be followed by investment and plenty of jobs in nations they visit.
A Chinese tourist at the Parthenon in Athens.
Photographer: Yorgos KarahalisIf you want to gauge how Chinese consumers are reshaping the world, look at how many of them are leaving China.
For vacation, that is. Outbound Chinese tourism has enjoyed explosive growth over the past decade and there's plenty more where that came from: only 5 percent of the Middle Kingdom's citizens hold a passport, compared with 40 percent in the U.S. That's a lot of ground to make up and suggests this boom has some staying power.