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They are only just starting to promote tourism again with the recent visa free travel deals. Luxury hotels that cater to tourists rather than business travellers (like the Amans) are still pretty empty in the mainland in my very recent experience. The English proficiency of hotel staff even at top international chains also varies much more than elsewhere in East Asia, yes including Japan (this may be true even if the average Chinese person speaks more English than the average Japanese, I couldn’t comment); there is always someone relatively fluent, but many staff aren’t. I don’t expect this but it obviously makes it harder for international tourists, whereas you can navigate as an American with no real experience in Asia in Tokyo with almost no problems. In Beijing and Shanghai having local coworkers around felt if not necessary then very useful.
China is also in that place where tourists looking for cheap beach vacations will naturally go to Thailand / Vietnam / etc over China. As a big, increasingly expensive and seasonal (in the sense that a lot of key cultural sites are in places that get [very] cold in the winter and [very] hot in the summer) destination, places like Beijing seem more like Moscow or St Petersburg before the war in terms of rich world tourism, in that they are going to attract primarily (upper) middle class, relatively well travelled people who want a glimpse into another culture rather than to go for a bucket list item, for food, because it’s cheap or for status (all the above have driven the recent Japanese tourism boom for example), which is a small proportion of the total.
Hainan is a thing, and China is actively promoting it as an inexpensive package tour destination.
Hainan's beaches don't really compare with Southeast Asian beaches though, its geography isn't very dramatic, and it also has a lack of heavyweight historical sights that could compare with an Angkor Wat or Borobudur Temple, being largely on the fringes of the Chinese state ever since it was incorporated into the empire. It was literally used as a strategic naval outpost and a prison island for exiled officials for much of Chinese history.
Most of the best Chinese historical sights are located deep in the north of the country, in provinces like Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu and so on, and while they are really spectacular to the point that I would say they're the best I've seen, the climate up there is indeed aggressively unforgiving. I visited in winter and it was cold, dusty and desolate to the point it felt practically Siberic; at one city I was in the temperature dropped below -18 degrees Celsius. I'm willing to endure these climates if it means I get to see all the historical sights by myself - even Chinese domestic tourists fuck off when everything is that cold - but your average tourist probably won't want to travel in these conditions, and probably would prefer to travel someplace with more English uptake, less spitting on the ground, international-standard tourist amenities, a better climate, and higher cultural status/clout within their social milieu.
I would say they're missing out on absolute peak, but people travel for significantly different reasons than I do I guess.
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I feel like getting your head around the mobile apps is the hardest part of linking into China. Once you've got Amaps/Wechat/Alipay sorted you're able to be a lot more functional as a tourist, plus the translator functions are pretty solid. I also find in my experience random Chinese people are more likely to see you as a positive novelty and actively help with translation/getting around, moreso than like Japan/Thailand where there's gigantic swarms of tourists and they've been relegated to pests. My opinion is heavily skewed by having some mandarin and enjoying randomly meandering around places, though.
Also agreed with the heat/cold aspects. I've been Shanghai twice in the last year and it was 40~ degrees Celsius last August and freezing temperature a few weeks ago, which I didn't expect. I do think the 5A system for tourism sites means that everything tends to be pretty accessible and developed (Even if that comes with questions about authenticity and what level of renovations are respectful). Also sheer scale of domestic tourism means that trying to get to the tier 1 spots like Beijing means all the (free) tickets to the Forbidden Palace and Tianamen square are taken in seconds. I do strongly recommend Nanjing for being a bit more relaxed, having a bevy of world class cultural sites and being a bit less busy than the Tier 1 cities.
China's incredibly affordable especially once you move outside of Shanghai/Beijing, but yeah I agree it'll generally attract more of the Upper Middle types. My recent trips I feel like I've seen way more random German/French tourists than anything else when it comes to laowai.
Yeah, @oats_son and I were reading a news article about a town near Fuji stopping its annual cherry blossom festival because all the tourists completely overwhelm the place. I feel kind of bad about it because I lived in Japan for most of a decade and got to enjoy it, but now literally everyone I meet tells me they want to go. I don't feel right discouraging them or being anything less than enthusiastic and helpful on their behalf, but there are far too many.
I'm honestly not the biggest fan of Japan. Prefer spending time in 2026 China, albeit I've only spent like 2 weeks in Tokyo and I hear good things about Osaka and the rest of the country so I plan to eventually circle through there so I might just be ignorant. It feels like everything is a swarm of random Gaijin.
I had a friend and his wife visit two years ago. I took them to a few places that were unique enough but also interesting (spending the night at Koyasan temple, for example) that many tourists still don't know about. Then we flew to my in-laws in the countryside of Kumamoto, where my friend and his wife got to be fully immersed in the life of a Japanese family. for a few days. Of course they only saw Mt Fuji through the plane window, and didn't see Hiroshima or Kyoto at all. But as tourism is now I see that as a win. Their photo reel is probably not as postcard-y as most who visit Japan, but fortunately they're the type people who don't crave social media validation.
If it's not too much to ask, I would actually be interested to hear what Japan recommendations you have for someone who is basically allergic to large crowds. In spite of my reservations about the tourism I'm not averse to the idea of a future trip to some lesser known destinations in the country, though I'd want to stay away from Kyoto, Fujikawaguchiko, Osaka and Tokyo entirely.
As such I've been scoping out the area for interesting places, and have been considering Koyasan, Nikko, Sado Island, Matsue/Izumo, Iya Valley and Hiraizumi; Miyajima looks nice too, but Itsukushima-jinja seems crowded on the best of days. It's a bit of a shame because Kyoto/Nara is so obviously the cultural centre of Japan with by far the highest concentration of history, and attractions seem to be rather far apart outside of there with a couple exceptions, but I can't justify travelling there considering the sheer amount of tourism the city receives. It's far beyond the actual capacity that it can realistically accommodate.
Mine is a fairly limited area of knowledge, but I would recommend Koyasan. I've been there in winter with snow and the beginning of Spring when it's considerably warmer, and once in summer where my friend was stung by a suzumebachi while walking through the persimmon groves on the side of the mountain. This would probably have not been the spectacle I remember it as if the kindly old Japanese farmer dude hadn't immediately leapt on my friend's back and started trying to suck out the venom (my friend would later say the old man's teeth hurt worse than the sting.)
Koya san is the home of the Shingon Buddhist sect, which is apparently different from other Buddhist sects in ways too subtle for me to have taught myself. There are several temples up there, as well as a very large and impressive cemetery--you can find the tomb of Oda Nobunaga back deep in the cedar and cypress forests. The temples offer only vegan food (the sparing, Japanese monk version) and you're sleeping on a futon on a tatami mat floor, but it's an interesting experience. You can rise at dawn and sit in on the monk's morning prayer chants. Foreigners are catching on to this place (the temples accept all) but it's relatively unspoiled compared to, say, Heian Jingu in Kyoto. Even in Kyoto you can escape crowds if you have a car or know someone, though you can't escape traffic.
There are also a few islands I've been to that are uncrowded yet tourist friendly. More the type of place Japanese tourists go.
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This is the kind of thing that has stopped me from travelling to Japan thus far, in spite of travelling through the rest of the East Asian sphere. There's nothing I can't stand more than being crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with other tourists when travelling, and it degrades the experience so heavily I would rather not go. I have also heard from other family members who have travelled there that the tourist numbers are unbearable, which doesn't give me confidence. Everybody and their mother wants to travel there and seems to view it as the premier East Asian destination; travel is at least part-fashion, and Japan seems to be in vogue at the moment.
Having grown up in Asia, this kind of feels a bit like being a Canadian and seeing everyone suddenly wanting to go to Calgary for some reason. In my opinion, there are other places in the continent that are equally as beautiful and cultural without being swarmed with tourists, that in fact are undertouristed, and that actually need the income to assist with preservation; I would rather visit these instead of an already-overtouristed country that is so aggressively swamped with people that the tourism is probably contributing to xenophobia in Japan at this point. It's to the point that I would feel complicit in a sort of vandalism.
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In the end tourism is a choice. Bhutan still has a $100-200 per person per night tourist tax to discourage budget tourism and it works for them.
When people in places like Barcelona, Venice, Tokyo etc complain about tourism without stuff like this they are making an active choice to keep the money flowing at the expense of crowdedness etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if the new PM instituted such a thing. It's partly what I'm annoyed about - I lived there for most of a decade and the tourists are going to make it far more difficult to go back.
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