the Thai economy a great deal. In 2015 alone, 4.62 million people came in tour
groups and spent almost 188 billion Baht or 5.8 billion US dollars (China daily
2015 ).
Due to globalization, with its impacts on global aviation and telecommunication,
Thailand can be easily accessed and searched as a tourist destination. The Tourism
Authority of Thailand (TAT 1995 ) reports four factors that facilitate the tourism
industry: (1) its strategic aviation center in Southeast Asia; (2) its quantity and
quality of natural resources and historical destinations; (3) its appropriately
developed accommodation, transportation, restaurants, souvenirs, and entertain-
ment; and (4) the friendliness and service-mindedness of Thais. From what TAT
explains, globalization and modernization has brought Thailand to the attention of
tourists from around the world.
Globalization did not only boost up the tourism industry, but also brought some
concerns about cultural heritage, cultural erosion, cultural values, and environ-
mental conservation, among other things. According to Lee ( 2003 :21–23), glob-
alization has three dimensions: spatial, temporal, and cognitive. The spatial
dimension concerns the growing sense of unlimited physical boundaries of social
interaction due to advanced telecommunication, speedy travel, trade, and so forth.
The temporal dimension concerns the real time and the perceived time in which
social interaction takes place. Lastly, the cognitive dimension concerns the creation
and exchange of knowledge, ideas, norms, beliefs, cultural identities, and other
thought processes. The last aspect of globalization is what this paper aims to
discuss. Basically, it is about cultural relativity, stereotyping, and ethnocentrism
triggered by tourism.
Former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s speech at the British Royal Society,
entitled“The path to China’s future”(27 June 2011), states as follows:
We have always called for respecting the diversity of civilizations and advocated dialogue,
exchanges and cooperation among them. The late Mr. Fei Xiaotong, a well-known Chinese
sociologist, received his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science in
the 1930 s. Having gone through many vicissitudes in life, he concluded in his late years
that‘The world will be a harmonious place if people appreciate their own beauty and that of
others, and work together to create beauty in the world.’These thoughts best illustrate the
open and inclusive mindset of China today (Xinhua 2014).
From the aforementioned speech, China acknowledges cultural diversity and
cross-cultural communication as part of its development scheme. Former Premier
Wen refers to democracy, fairness, rules of law, and human rights that would go
hand in hand with economic prosperity and sustainable development. It is without a
doubt that democracy, human rights, and so forth in the worldview of Socialist
China would be differently defined and applied from those in the West. China’s
open-door policy, as part of joining the globalization process, has made China
prosper in economic terms. However, the sociocultural and environmental aspects
of the path to sustainable development are still in progress. With economic pro-
gress, the Mainlanders can afford more to compete with Western and Japanese
travelers to appreciate“others’beauty.” However, the quality of the Chinese
tourists visiting Thailand in 2015 is somewhat contradictory to what Former
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