Kanas Scenic Area is located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where crystal-clear lakes meet lush forests and majestic mountains, creating a landscape of timeless beauty. Photo: Fang Ke/CSST

China’s tourism sector is moving rapidly into a new stage in which immersive experience and media communication are deeply intertwined, reflecting broader changes in contemporary social mentality. As tourists seek culturally distinctive experiences in different destinations, they are placing greater emphasis on personal identity, expression, and self-presentation. At the same time, an increasingly mediatized environment is reshaping how tourists choose destinations, experience them, and share their journeys. As a result, demand for immersive experience and digital social interaction has converged in unprecedented ways. Tourists are no longer content simply to “have been there and seen that.” Instead, they crave genuine, integrated experiences and place higher value on recording and sharing their journeys.

‘Trans-boundary’ perspective

In the era of mass tourism, diversified mobility is propelling Chinese society toward a more open and inclusive “trans-boundary” social formation. Here, “trans-boundary” refers to tourism’s holistic transcendence of traditional geographical boundaries, social strata, industrial divisions, and even the divide between physical and virtual spaces. The consumers of tourism have shifted from the “leisure class” to the general public; forms of mobility now range from hurried “special forces-style” trips to year-round sojourns; and tourism experiences have expanded from the physical to the virtual, and from the exotic to the everyday.

Amid rapid mobility and advances in digital intelligence, tourism’s boundary-crossing nature has become increasingly evident. This, in turn, suggests that building China into a strong tourism nation is not only a matter of expanding the cultural and tourism industry as a consumer economy or adjusting its structure. It also requires answering a broader question: How can the inclusive development of tourism contribute to the overarching goal of national rejuvenation, while advancing development strategies and fulfilling the mission of inter-civilizational exchange under a “trans-boundary” logic?

Beyond tourism sector

At the macro level, tourism reflects shifts in social mentality and aligns with the strategic orientation of national top-level design. Its growing capacity to drive, integrate, and upgrade development enables it to synergize with related industries and fields, enhance industrial value, and generate new business models and knowledge paradigms.

At the meso level, tourism exerts a strong coordinating effect on regional development. It promotes rural revitalization, helps restore urban-rural circulation, and generates parallel forces of “de-marginalization” and “re-centralization.”

At the micro level, tourism is a crucial means by which individuals gain agency and pursue holistic self-realization. Overall, tourism forms an interdependent and mutually reinforcing five-dimensional system encompassing economic contribution, cultural guidance, public well-being, international competitiveness, and ecological sustainability. It holds immense potential to drive the transformation of a major country and the building of a strong nation.

Trans-spatial expansion

Moving beyond the conventional resource-centric view that treats culture merely as the “foundation” or “soul” of tourism, the industry’s role in nurturing and creating culture—as well as promoting international cultural exchange and civilizational communication—is rapidly gaining recognition.

From the dynamic Yingge dance performances characteristic of the Chaoshan region in south China’s Guangdong Province to the recent hit film “Dear You,” also set in Chaoshan, local cultures are transformed through tourism’s “amplifying” effect into catalysts for global civilizational dialogue.

Through tourism, “small places” and the “wider world” are connected across time and space, allowing Chinese stories to reach global audiences with greater emotional resonance. At the same time, global tourism networks promote a cyclical flow of “cultural export” and “returning flow,” building platforms for empathy, sharing, and co-creation among diverse cultures.

Enhancing individual life value

Tourism fundamentally requires both physical presence and embodied experience. In the post-truth era, it offers individuals an opportunity to step outside information cocoons and seek authenticity, prompting them to reflect on their attitudes toward life, broaden their intellectual horizons, and deepen their spiritual awareness.

Increasingly, tourism has evolved into a driver of social progress, enabling individuals to understand themselves through mobility, understand others through experience, and embrace the world through dialogue.

At the same time, self-transcendence is not only a matter of expanding individual cognitive boundaries. It is also reflected in the growing popularization of tourism rights, as tourism shifts from an elite privilege to an entitlement shared by all. The romantic ideal of “poetic dwelling” is now tied to the sense of gain and happiness of ordinary people, becoming woven into the fabric of everyday life and daily habits. As a result, cultivating national character, enhancing soft power, and promoting well-rounded human development and a better life should be the ultimate objectives of building China into a strong tourism nation.

Sun Jiuxia is a professor from the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University.