ANDRES OPPENHEIMER Chinese tourism bypasses the U.S.

MIAMI -- Here is something the United States and Latin America should begin looking at: getting a slice of the 100 million Chinese tourists a year who are expected to flood the world in the not so distant future.
Last week, China added 27 European countries to its list of "approved destinations" for Chinese people to travel abroad in package tours. France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and other European countries are now among 54 countries in the world approved to receive Chinese travel groups, but neither the United States nor any major Latin American country is on the list.
It's a big deal, involving billions of dollars, which for some reason has not yet caught the public eye in this part of the world. While individual Chinese citizens can theoretically travel wherever they want, the Chinese government makes such trips cumbersome and expensive. Most Chinese tourists travel abroad in package tours, Chinese government reports show.
Big numbers
China already is one of the world's most rapidly growing sources of outbound tourism: According to the World Tourism Organization, which monitors the industry's trends, more than 20 million Chinese will travel abroad this year. The number will increase to more than 100 million by 2020.
Until now, most Chinese tourists have traveled to Macao, South Korea and Australia. But we will soon see millions of Chinese tourists shopping in Europe. France alone expects 1.5 million Chinese tourists next year, according to French press reports.
"China is already a larger source of outbound tourists than Japan," said Augusto Huesca, a senior official with the WTO, in a telephone interview from Madrid, Spain. "By 2020, We expect China to be among the four or five largest sources of outbound tourism in the world."
The Chinese government, in an effort to prevent a major surge of capital outflow, allows tourists to take only up to $5,000 when they travel abroad.
"The Chinese love shopping," a WTO study on China's outbound tourism says. "They admire famous brands and commodities with local characteristics, such as articles made of crocodile skin in Thailand, gold or silverware in Hong Kong -- [and] garments and handbags of famous brands in Europe."
Incredibly, despite the current spat between the United States and China over the $125 billion U.S. trade deficit with China, the Bush administration is not raising hell about the U.S. exclusion from the Chinese list of "approved" destinations.
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said the United States restricts visas to Chinese citizens, suggesting that there is no major U.S. interest in attracting Chinese tourists.
When I called the Commerce Department, whose secretary, Donald Evans, recently called on the Chinese to "show more cooperation and less manipulation" in world trade, a press official referred me to the U.S. Trade Representative's Office, which in turn referred me to the State Department.
A State Department official, after looking into the matter, told me that "as far as I can tell, it's not an issue that we have raised with the Chinese in the context of trade talks."
U.N. peacekeepers
On the other hand, U.S. officials are voicing concern about a different kind of Chinese visitor to this part of the world: A 127-man Chinese police unit, specializing in riot control, is scheduled to join United Nations peacekeeping troops in Haiti later this month.
It will be the first time China has participated with such a big police unit in such a mission anywhere in the world.
The Chinese military also will send six 20-man boats, and has offered a helicopter support unit. According to U.S. officials, it's part of a long-term Chinese plan to gain diplomatic influence in Latin America -- and to undermine U.S. clout in the region.
"For anyone who cares about democracy, transparency, rule of law and human rights, the Chinese arrival in this region is not good news," a U.S. official told me. China already is the biggest backer of Cuba and Venezuela in world forums, the official said.
Indeed, something is going on here.
Chinese presidents have visited six Western Hemisphere countries since 2001, U.S. officials say. The next time a Chinese president shows up, somebody should tell him to put the United States and Latin America on his government's list of "approved" travel destinations.
XOppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.