Silk Road Economic Belt Initiative and Inbound Tourism Development in the Uyghur Autonomous Region

Abstract

The “Silk Road Economic Belt” (SREB) is a land-based component of the “One Belt One Road” initiative that intends to create an economic corridor connecting China with the rest of the Eurasian continent via Central Asia. The aims of the SREB are to stimulate multilateral trade and maintain open border regimes that consequently promote Sino-Central Asia cross-border movements including international tourism. Chinese authority accredited the success of the SREB to long-term stability in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). In order to achieve long-term stability, Beijing has determined to fight against the “three evil forces” namely political separatism, Islamist extremism and terrorism. These hardline measures of keeping the regional stability and consequent government policies and regulations towards cross-border tourism, however, hamper the international tourism mobility to the XUAR, which makes inbound tourism development in the XUAR vulnerable and a side issue of the SREB.