China's tourism industry is only just getting going

New York

IF you want to gauge how Chinese consumers are reshaping the world, look at how many of them are leaving China.

For vacation, that is. Outbound Chinese tourism has enjoyed explosive growth over the past decade and there's plenty more where that came from: only 5 per cent of the Middle Kingdom's citizens hold a passport, compared with 40 per cent in the US. That's a lot of ground to make up and suggests this boom has some staying power.