Grounding bad jetsetters

Leaving trash everywhere is a questionable behavior of many Chinese tourists while traveling not only in the country, but also abroad.[Photo by Dai Wenxue/China Daily]

Authorities are considering policies to deny overseas-travel applications from Chinese tourists who act 'embarrassingly' abroad. 

Simply saying "tsk-tsk" seems insufficient. So authorities are considering grounding outbound Chinese travelers who do the travel don'ts. The hope is poo-pooing future trips by tourists who've committed no-nos overseas will encourage them to act maturely.

Shanghai, for one, plans to legislate punitive measures to curb "childish behaviors" by local tourists when they travel outside the country.

The metropolis' government officials say the city will this year consider blacklisting tourists found to conduct themselves "shamefully" abroad.

Authorities may deny offenders' subsequent overseas-travel applications if they want to join overseas tour groups in the future, the Shanghai Morning Post reported on Feb 12.

The rules proposed by the city - one of the country's major middle-class bastions - are some of the country's strictest and point to the likely intensification of measures Chinese authorities may adopt to fight outbound travelers' negative image.

Shanghai's announcement came after Jiangsu province officially blacklisted four travelers because they caused chaos on a Thai AirAsia budget flight from Bangkok to Jiangsu's capital, Nanjing.

After a passenger scalded a flight attendant with hot water, another threatened to blow up the plane while a third threatened to commit suicide by jumping out of the emergency door, while banging on the windows, media report.

Ultimately, the flight had to return to Bangkok.

But questions surround how this blacklisting will deter other Chinese tourists from behaving "badly".

China's breakneck economic growth has made the country the biggest source of outbound tourists. But it has also produced a noveau-riche mentality that manifests as behavior atrocious enough to grab global headlines. This has been so frequent that it gives outbound tourists a degree of notoriety.

More than 100 million mainlanders traveled abroad in the first 10 months of last year, compared with 8.4 million in 1998. A third of outbound Chinese tourists go for sightseeing. Others make trips for such reasons as shopping.

Education is the culprit, domestic think tank National Public Opinion Poll's chief analyst Liu Zhiming says.

"Chinese have been taught obedience to parents and authority. So they may go wild in foreign environments if unsupervised."

Chinese tourist etiquette is underdeveloped, he says. And this may become more apparent in foreign cultures.