Geography, leisure
and recreation in
Asia
Leisure and Recreation in Modern Society
GEOG2057
Lecture 10
Room: CPD-3.29
Tuesdays 1030am – 1220pm
Dr Ben Iaquinto
[email protected]
Office: 10.33
Lecture Overview
• Tourism in Asia
• Leisure in China
• Modern mass tourism in China
• Chinese tourism vs Western tourism (similarities and
differences)
• Transport and infrastructure issues in Asian tourism
• Human resource and labour issues in Asian tourism
• Tourism policies and politics in Asia
• Modern mass tourism in Asia: theoretical issues
• Eurocentrism in tourism research
Tourism in Asia
• Growth forecasts: Asia and the Pacific will comprise 30% of international
arrivals in 2030 (535 million people)
• Employment and human resources: training, education and linkages
between tourism and other economic sectors (ie. agriculture, transport)
• Cross-border tourism development: unrealized potential for extending
visitation lengths and multi-destination marketing
• Planning: infrastructure required to cope with urbanisation
Defining
Asia
Leisure in
China
• Leisure as a temporal resource (xianxia)
• Leisure as a spiritual good in the lives of
all people (xiuxian)
• Derogatory term ‘xiaoqian’ means to
while away time or divert oneself
• In the Baixingnese language code: wan
means ‘having fun’; fubai (FB) means
‘corrupt’
Chinese tourism vs Western tourism:
differences and similarities
• Chinese tourism development is new: double digit
growth in GDP for the past twenty years
• Government involvement in tourism: growth of tourism
in China is closely tied with the role of the Chinese
government and its policies.
• Pro-poor rural tourism initiatives: Chinese policy has
promoted tourism as a means of income and
employment generation in the poorer and more
marginalized areas of China
• The role of regulation: innovation and change vs unruly
Transport and infrastructure issues in
Asian tourism
• Air transport issues: push to develop a single
aviation market across ASEAN countries
• Marine and cruise tourism issues:
infrastructure, political relations and the
preferences of Asian tourists
• Belt and Road Initiative: China plans to link
Southeast Asia to China via high speed rail
Geographies of infrastructure
• Infrastructure: the physical, material backbone
of transportation, energy use, resource
extraction, and telecommunication.
• Infrastructure is often built by states to achieve
certain political goals (eg. securing territory,
boosting legitimacy to govern or for nation
building purposes)
• Tourism infrastructure may permit a country to
exert authority in regions beyond its sovereign
territory (eg. China’s Arctic infrastructure)
Human resource and labour issues in
Asian tourism
• Supply and demand issues: low pay, long
working hours, lack of career advancement
opportunities
• Political factors: many Asian countries are
opening up economically, increasing private
sector jobs
• Migrant labour: relaxed immigration policies
among ASEAN countries
• Labour market practices and wages: dominated
by part-time, casual and temporary jobs
Tourism policies and politics in
Asia
• Politics of mobility: states have the power to
render their citizens and visitors immobile
• Bilateral and multilateral agreements:
tourism patterns in Asia are changing
because of shifting economic and trade
policies in the region
• Tourism and political instability: tourism may
thrive in authoritarian countries because of
their stability, and tourism can be used by
these regimes to improve their public image
Modern mass tourism in Asia:
theoretical issues
How tourism is conventionally understood
(i) tourism is based on interactions between ‘hosts
and guests’;
(ii) hosts are members of traditional communities
usually in the developing world;
(iii) the guests are from affluent societies in the
developed world;
(iv) interactions are characterized by income
Eurocentrism in tourism
research
• The dominance of research from the Western nations
perpetuates Eurocentric knowledge production in
tourism
• A dominant tourism theory – that tourists are on a
search for authenticity – doesn’t fit the behavior of
mainland Chinese tourists
• Tourism research must move away from assuming a
singular point of dissemination of tourism, and avoid
prioritizing particular motivations for tourism
• A mobilities perspective could help to theorize
Video:
China’s New $6B Railway in Laos: Massive Debt
Trap or Megaproject Success?
• Wall Street Journal, Breaking Ground, 22
September 2023
• https://youtu.be/JMvJvSThv1A?
si=OM1GkI_X9QNjRrfc
Summary
• Asia is both a major source of tourists as
well as a tourist destination
• Increases in leisure and tourism across
Asia reflect growing affluence and
consumer spending among people in
Asia
• The fortunes of the global economy
increasingly depend on Asian economies
Key Points to
Remember
• Domestic tourism is huge in many Asian
countries (China, India, Indonesia) - more
research is required to understand domestic
tourism
• Modernist theories of tourism were developed in
Western countries and are thus limited in their
applicability to Asia.
• Eurocentrism in tourism research holds back the
theoretical development of tourism and hinders
deeper understandings of the Asian context
Conclusion
• A key theme is mobility: transport infrastructure,
mobility politics, rural-to-urban migration, labour
mobility and the (im)mobility of Western-based
theories of tourism
• While Asia is a tourist hub, challenges in the areas
of environment, labour, politics, transport and
COVID-19 might curtail future growth
• Cross-border issues and political disagreements
will also be a consistent feature of Asian tourism
Further Reading
Next week: leisure study as a cross-
disciplinary field
• Understanding how different disciplines have approached the study of
leisure
• What would a cross-disciplinary study of leisure reveal that single
disciplinary approaches couldn’t?
• Why would leisure require a cross-disciplinary approach?
