With China's economy going up, and its citizens enjoying their long holidays, more and more Chinese citizens are travelling abroad for business and leisure. Today outbound tourism has been developing rapidly. In 1999, China's outbound figures came up to 9.2 million, second only to Japan (16 million) in the region, and the figures are expected to increase by 20 percent annually. But early in the 1980s the Chinese Government placed tight restrictions on outbound tourism. Then, the slightly liberalized policy first eased Chinese leisure travel to Hong Kong and Macau, because of ethnic, cultural and political connections. At that time, "outbound travel was defined as visit to friends and relatives. Thus the trip was sponsoredFinancially by overseas relatives and friends so there was no drain on China's foreign exchange reserves.