China's big-spending tourists leave trail of havoc

The billions they spend are welcome – but the brawls and brazen shoplifting are not winning them friends

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SHANGHAI - The purchasing power of China’s new rich is now so great, and the number of Chinese travelling abroad is so high (97 million last year), that they have become the world's biggest spenders, disposing of $100 billion on their travels in 2013.

“Chinese tourists spend so much abroad that some foreigners are calling us ‘walking wallets’,” Song Rui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told China Daily.

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Gary Jones is a China correspondent for The Week online, dividing his time between Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. He has written for The Times, The Sunday Times, The Observer, GQ and Wallpaper among others, and for newspapers in Australia, Canada and the US.