International pilgrimage
As China's red tourism goes global, Russia, which shares a similar communist past with China, is expected to be the biggest winner. Last June, travel authorities from China and Russia signed a cooperative agreement in Shaoshan, Central China's Hunan Province, Mao Zedong's birthplace, to develop red tourism routes in both countries.
Apart from traditional tourist destinations like Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia's red route also includes Ulyanovsk, Lenin's birthplace, and Kazan, the city where he studied.
The cooperation program seems to have paid off for the Russians. Data from the Moscow tourism department shows that over 1 million tourists from China visited Russia in 2015, a 51 percent increase on the year before. They spent nearly $1 billion.
Ulyanovsk is expected to become Russia's version of Shaoshan, heart of China's red tourism. Government officials from Ulyanovsk said the city will build a China park to cater to Chinese tourists, which will be equipped with hotels, a Chinese supermarket, traditional Chinese medicine medical center, commercial complexes and a Russia-China research institute. The park will be the next step in Russia's effort to attract Chinese tourists and boost red tourism, Sputnik News reported.
Moscow is also planning to rebuild the venue where the sixth national congress of the CPC was held and turn it into a memorial museum. In 1928, CPC moved the venue of its congress to Moscow.
The Ivanovo International Children's Home, about 300 kilometers east of Moscow which used to be a home for the children of revolutionaries around the world including Mao Anying, son of Mao Zedong, and Zhu Min, daughter of Chinese general Zhu De in the 1930s and 40s, is also considering opening its doors to Chinese tourists, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Inbound
Establishing red tourism links with countries is just the first step in China's plan to expand red tourism. Experts say the next step will be to attract foreigners to China's red sites.
"China is at the point of development that it wants the world to listen to our voice. We need to tell China's story well to an international audience and show our confidence in it," Li Zhong, deputy head of the College of Tourism and Service Management at Nankai University, told the Global Times.
Li was recently commissioned by the China National Tourism Administration to conduct research into the globalization of red tourism, and he reveals that globalizing red tourism will be the next target for China's official tourism body. That includes designing red tourism products for international tourists and bringing China's red tourism sites up to international standards, he said.
But the strong ideological overtones of China's red tourism sites have incurred doubts over whether they can successfully attract international travelers.
The popularity of traditional red tourism spots are still limited among international tourists. According to official statistics, 16.82 million tourists visited Shaoshan, the heart of red tourism in China, in 2015, a 28 percent increase over 2014. Among them, only 160,000 were foreign tourists - accounting for less than one percent.
On tripadvisor.com, a popular travel website that provides reviews for tourists, Mao Zedong's former residence in Shaoshan only has 91 user reviews, most of which are in Chinese, as opposed to thousands of reviews in English and Chinese under natural tourist attractions like Jiuzhaigou, a nature reserve in Southwest China's Sichuan Province.
"There will definitely be curious foreigners who are interested in these attractions, but considering the differences between China and the West in ideology and social systems, it's unlikely that red tourism will attract a large international following," Liu Simin, deputy director at the China Society for Future Tourism Studies, told the Global Times.
Li Zhong also admits that there is a long way to go. "Red tourism, after all, is a form of tourism. China's red tourism sites are not the reason the majority of international tourists visit China."
Contrary to what some had expected, however, ideology doesn't seem to be the biggest problem, according to some tourists. A tourist from Singapore, who visited Mao's former residence this January, commented that the site is "too commercial." "We were led to a museum and were asked to buy souvenirs and small statues. Very commercialized and … I think it should not be glorified in this way," the tourist's review said.
