If you are looking for China Tours Subsidized by the Chinese Government, you should read this.
Before COVID-19, several tour companies peddled “China tours subsidized by the Chinese government” all over the internet even though such subsidized tours never existed for ordinary tourists. These deceiving companies all went belly up in the wake of COVID-19. However, it is almost certain that the “entrepreneurs” behind such schemes would resurface somewhere under different corporate identities to take advantage of gullible consumers.
The unscrupulous merchant sells you a China tour package below cost and tells you it is all because the trip is sponsored or subsidized by the Chinese government. Being someone who speaks no Chinese or knows little about China, you accept what you are being told, thinking what a bargain you’ve just gotten yourself.
What happens afterward goes like this. The guide and driver at the destination buy you from the tour company for the right to “serve” you. Once you are in their hands, you’ll be paraded through endless shopping stops and scams disguised as immersive activities (tea ceremony, jade appraisal, herbal medicines, you name it) throughout the trip. Instead of visiting historical landmarks and learning about Chinese culture, you end up spending most of your time fending off aggressive sales pitches. You say, well, I’m not going to open up my wallet no matter what. What can they do about it? Only people who put no value on their time would think this way. They will not let you out unless you spend at least 90 minutes in the shop and there are actually people from the shop recording your group’s arrival and departure time. Before the pandemic, some participants thought they could outsmart the guide and driver by skipping some days or activities. Guess what happened to them? They no longer had a hotel room to go back to at night 🙂
In such places where you’ll find no local Chinese shoppers, everything is outrageously overpriced so that you can bargain the price down. A $1,000 jade bracelet can be bought for $200 and you say to yourself what a bargain it is without realizing that the piece of fake jade in your hand is worth no more than $20 elsewhere.
Sometimes, the scams become comical. One true story reported in the Chinese news media has it that an unemployed old man with white hair is hired to sit in a herbal medicine shop doubling as clinic (common in China, especially in the old days) posing as an accomplished doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. He’d go through the drill with the tourist as though he were a real doctor. The white gown, eyeglasses with a tortoise frame, and his concerned facial expression definitely lend him an aura of authority. The old fellow would dutifully mention a list of health issues and, of course, spells out a bunch of herbal medicines to cure them. The gullible tourist would thankfully load up on the merchandise recommended. For sure, the stuff purchased wouldn’t kill the “patient”. The expensive medicine balls are actually made of dough and sugar with bitter but harmless seasoning ingredients mixed in.
These tour companies would tell you that the stores are owned by the government and they have to take you there because your trip is being subsidized by the Chinese government. What a fat lie! It just makes no sense for a government so busy running the world’s second-largest economy with a huge US dollar reserve in its control to waste time and money on such laughable attempts. The Chinese government got out of the retail business geared towards foreign tourists decades ago through the privatization of their “Friendship Stores”. To think that the Chinese government owns or operates tourist stores is just crazy.
And that’s not all. The guide would waste no time in the bus, walking up and down the aisle peddling shoddy and fake merchandise. If the guide couldn’t hit the sales target, he or she could get really nasty (rightly so because the guide and driver are the ones actually subsidizing your trip). Their list of punishments include downgrading the already-lousy tourist meals and parking the bus in the middle of nowhere claiming the vehicle is having some mechanical problem, which, miraculously, could be easily fixed with you opening up your wallet.
You may have read somewhere that all China tour companies include shopping stops in their tours. Such misinformation is understandable if it comes from credulous tourists. When this nonsense originates from a tour company, you know you are dealing with a dishonest business.
Laurus Travel has been offering China tours without forced shopping stops since 1998 with a stellar reputation to boot. Just read the huge number of consumer reviews for proof. You can also find many reviews on our China tours all over the Internet.
To sum it up, China tours subsidized by the Chinese government simply don’t exist for ordinary tourists. Now you know why.
