China plans to create a “blacklist” of its tourists who behave badly overseas, state media reported, after several embarrassing incidents involving Chinese traveling abroad.
The Chinese National Tourism Administration is to keep a database of travelers who commit offenses, with their names passed onto police, customs officials and even banks, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.
Offenses that could earn obnoxious tourists a place on the blacklist include “acting antisocially on public transport, damaging private or public property, disrespecting local customs, sabotaging historical exhibits and engaging in gambling or pornographic activities,” Xinhua said.
People are to be blacklisted for two years after they offend, it added.
The Chinese economy has boomed over the past decade, expanding the ranks of its middle-class who are hungry for foreign travel after the nation’s decades of isolation.
Chinese travelers took 100 million outbound trips — including to Hong Kong and Macau — last year, according to official figures.
However, the surge of wanderlust has left some officials back home red-faced and the blacklist is the latest effort to control Chinese citizens behavior abroad.
Chinese tourists were reported to have outraged locals in Thailand this year by drying underwear in an airport, defecating in public and kicking a bell at a temple.
Several air rage incidents — including Chinese passengers opening emergency exit doors and throwing boiling noodles at cabin crew — have also been reported in the past year.
In 2013, a Chinese sparked online outrage after he wrote his name on an ancient carving in Egypt.
The tourism administration said in a 64-page Guidebook for Civilized Tourism, issued in 2013, that tourists should not pick their noses in public, urinate in pools or steal airplane life jackets.
Chinese travelers spent US$102 billion overseas in 2012, making them the world’s biggest spenders ahead of German and US tourists, according to the UN World Tourism Organization.
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