Wednesday, August 31, 2016

China Tourists are so down that they are up over the first six months of 2015


The sturdy mag Commonwealth has a piece in Chinese on China tourism in Taiwan. It observes that Chinese tourists are actually up in the first six months of 2016, something which I had not bothered to check...
大陸觀光客來台人數減少究竟有多嚴重?攤開觀光局的統計數字來看,2016上半年從中國大陸來台觀光的人次其實不減反增,為何許多觀光業者叫苦連天,甚至要走上街頭?台灣的觀光旅遊業,下一步該怎麼走?
Numbers...

Jan 15 321,458
Feb 15 406,239
Mar 15 279,703
Apr 15 358,798
May 15 372,766
Jun 15 308,087
Total: 2,047,051

Jan  16 366,409
Feb 16 405,307
Mar 16 363,878
Apr 16 375,567
May 16 327,254
Jun 16 271,478
Total: 2,109,893

Adding the numbers from Jul...

Jul 15 352,625
Jul 16 299,642

yields
First 7 months of 2015: 2,399,676
First 7 months of 2016: 2,409,535

Tourists from China up slightly still. No great slash appearing in the numbers... but you know what the pundits will say!
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Daily Links
  • Ralph Jennings has two awful pieces in Forbes this week, one error-ridden piece on the Tsai Administration, another a trollish listicle in which Ralph discovers that China is better than Taiwan because it is more Chinese and then in point 3 goes on to praise the Chengguan of China.
  • Taiwan and the Catholic Church from CPI. Good stuff...
  • I must be getting suspicious and paranoid in my old age. In the midst of a government push to give Taiwan a makeover as a good place for expats to live, suddenly a survey pops up showing Taiwan is the number 1 place for expats to live. Not that I disagree, but my experience with the epistemology of coincidence tells me something is decaying near Copenhagen...
  • Asia Sentinel piece on the KMT assets quotes John Copper, the longtime pro-KMT "scholar", ranting about the English language world which overwhelmingly supports a democratic and independent Taiwan -- and hilariously claiming they are paid by the DPP to do so. What a sad waste... 
  • A Washington-based pro-KMT think tank has a piece in The Diplomat warning of tsunamis, the end of civilization, and global war if Tsai does not adhere to the One China policy of Beijing. Watch out for more from this crowd...
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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I guess the pundits will say that May + June + July are 10 % lower on yoy. Or that if you remove January, it will not work. Or anything. These games with statistics are pointless.

Michael Turton said...

I notice some are more careful now, noting only that group tours are down.

Anonymous said...

If the numbers supposedly aren't actually down, what's all the hubbub about then?

Anonymous said...

If the numbers supposedly aren't actually down, what's all the hubbub about then?

Anonymous said...

"A Washington-based KMT think tank has a piece in The Diplomat"
I didn't know that the Institute of Taiwan-America studies was a KMT think tank. I mean I could tell the members (ie Yeni Wong and Ho-I Wu) were strongly pro-Blue people, but do you know if the institute is funded by KMT?

Anonymous said...

"ground move and mountains shake,’(lol) ... even her executive power could come tumbling down"
More hollow "Chinese" threats. Waaaa! Why do Taiwanese like democracy and self-determination... Really...
I thought the Diplomat was reputable.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... the numbers are down after 520. Down 50,000 between July 2015 and July 2016.

Michael Turton said...

Yep. That's China proper. Once you toss in HKK, then you get very close to 2015 levels. So I am wondering if Hong Kong is being used to balance China. But everything is so opaque.