CHEAP clothing, children's toys and other manufactures are not the only exports from China that are growing exponentially. Chinese tourists in their millions are now pouring out of the country. Twenty years ago, mainland Chinese was practically banned from leaving China as tourists. Today they are the single most important development in world tourism.

The Chinese Government approved the first batch of outbound travel destinations in 1997, including Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macau. In that year, 5.32 million trips were made. By 2002, the number had risen to 16.6 million. By 2004, it was 28.9 million. The number of mainland Chinese tourists traveling abroad has increased fifty fold in the past 20 years and has an annual growth rate of about 20 per cent.

The Economist Intelligence Unit has estimated there will be 60 million tourists out of mainland China by 2010 and 100 million by 2015. The World Trade Organization believes the 100 million figures will be reached later, in 2020.

The list of approved destinations is now almost 100. In Europe, France is the most popular destination — about 700,000 mainland Chinese visited the country in 2005 — followed by Italy. Possibly by 2015, the Chinese will be the first or second-biggest national group to visit France each year, ahead of the British, Americans and Japanese, according to the Paris Tourist Board. The lure is not history, art or food — it is shopping.

Indeed, it is not simply the number of mainlanders who now travel that makes the phenomenon so interesting, but how much they spend and on what. According to research by Goldman Sachs, per capita they spend at least what Japanese tourists spend — a surprising result given the vastly different per head income of the two economies.

Mainland travelers prefer to stay in middle-range hotels and spend relatively little on food, leaving perhaps 50 to 70 per cent of their total holiday budget for shopping. This contrasts with typical Western travelers, who prefer to spend more on accommodation and services. Acquiring trophies from a trip abroad is important to the Chinese. They like to buy luxury goods that can be shown off to the people back home.

But the preference for luxury goods does not mean that the mainlanders are indifferent to price: they want branded goods but want to pay as little for them as possible. Luxury goods tend to be 20 to 30 per cent cheaper in Europe or Hong Kong than China due to high tariffs and consumption taxes there.

They tend to take a long time to make their purchasing decisions, comparing prices and being sensitive to even the smallest differences. Often bus tours of mainlanders will visit historic sites in Europe — stopping at the British Museum for example — but only long enough to be photographed in front of the sign that says British Museum before moving on to the next stop.

They don't actually go in. At this stage in their development as a nation of tourists, there's little genuine interest in culture and history. It's more about trophy hunting — getting photographs to impress friends back home. Department stores are among the most popular itinerary stops.

Also, mainland Chinese like to visit the local Chinatown, be they in Kuala Lumpur, Paris or London. They are curious to see how other Chinese live around the world. Red-light districts are popular with male Chinese, and casinos are popular with both sexes.

China Union Pay, China's own credit card, which was set up in 2002, is becoming accepted increasingly outside China, with the rapid rise of the mainland Chinese tourist. Many big Paris department stores now accept it.

In Australia, National Australia Bank has teamed with China Union Pay so that Chinese tourists can make eftpos purchases and ATM withdrawals with their credit and debit cards. Banks in the US, Germany and Egypt are among the others to have followed suit.

The China Union Pay card is set for phenomenal growth around the world as countries and retailers rush to accept it.

It is likely to be one of the best-known Chinese brands outside China within a decade, its logo joining those of Visa and MasterCard at cash machines and tills around the world.

Asian destinations account for about 90 per cent of the travel outside the mainland. Not surprisingly, Hong Kong is the most popular destination.

Beyond greater China, South-East Asia is the most popular. It is not too far, is relatively inexpensive, Mandarin is spoken widely and Chinese food readily had.

In the past, South-East Asian governments were deeply suspicious of China and were worried that their own minority Chinese populations would become conduits for communism. Until recently, Malaysia banned its citizens from traveling to China. The passports of Malaysians were printed with the message that they were not valid for China and Israel (the ban on Israel remains). But today, the region is eager for the business.

Singapore is building casinos and Indonesia has ended its ban on the use of Chinese characters, for example.

Australia has become an important destination too. It was accredited as a tourist destination in 1999. The number of mainland Chinese arriving as short-term visitors to Australia has increased by more than 20 per cent each year since then, so that now one-in-15 short-term visitors is from mainland China.

They will become even more important in the coming years, particularly as they grow in their maturity as tourists and wean themselves off the luxury labels of Europe.