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Japan has crashed out of the top 10 overseas destinations for Chinese travellers during the country’s week-long National Day holiday, as relations between Beijing and Tokyo remain strained over Taiwan.

Golden Week marks the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and is one of the country’s busiest travel periods, starting on 1 October and lasting until 7 October. Chinese authorities expect about 2.13 billion passenger trips during the holiday period.

Japan was the single most popular overseas destination for Chinese travellers during last year’s holidays, but according to Kyodo News no longer features at all in a top 10 list compiled using data from major Chinese travel agency Tuniu.

Indonesia, Turkey and South Korea are reportedly among the destinations attracting the most interest this year, when the combination of the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival breaks is also expected to encourage longer trips.

The shift comes amid tensions between Tokyo and Beijing over Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about Taiwan last year. In November, Ms Takaichi suggested that Japan’s self-defence forces could be mobilised if a Chinese attack on self-governed Taiwan threatened Japan’s survival.

Her comments, made during a parliamentary session, marked a sharp break from Tokyo’s long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan – a stance designed to deter conflict without directly provoking China.

China responded strongly to her remarks and condemned them as “egregious”, with Xue Jian, China’s consul general in Osaka, amplifying tensions by writing on X that “the dirty head that sticks itself in must be cut off”.

China urged its people to stay away from Japan and issued a series of stern warnings. The Chinese foreign ministry said at the time that the Japanese prime minister’s “blatantly provocative remarks on Taiwan” had “further damaged the atmosphere for people-to-people exchanges, creating additional risks to the safety and security of Chinese citizens” in the East Asian country. It urged citizens to “refrain from visiting Japan for the time being”.

Beijing regards Taiwan as part of China and has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan rejects this assertion.

Chinese visitors have been a major component of Japan’s post-pandemic tourism recovery. Nearly 7.5 million people from China visited Japan in the first nine months of 2025, making China one of the country’s biggest overseas tourism markets.

But arrivals dropped by about 45 per cent in December last year and have remained substantially lower this year.

Last year Indonesia recorded a sharp increase in Chinese visitors, with arrivals reaching 1.34 million – the highest level in six years – signalling a strong recovery in travel between the two countries, according to China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency.

In Turkey, Chinese tourists are also showing growing interest in adventure tourism, local media reports have suggested. Tour operators in Fethiye, a resort town on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, for example, say that Chinese visitors now account for about one in three paragliding flights from Babadag during the Golden Week holiday.

File. Tourists use smartphones to take photographs of cherry trees in bloom at Arakurayama Sengen Park on 8 April 2026 in Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan (Getty)

According to China’s state-owned Global Times, data from Qunar – a major Chinese online travel booking platform – showed that bookings for long-haul flights of more than 2,000km rose by over 40 per cent year-on-year on the first day of the National Day holiday.

Earlier, Qunar said Chinese tourists were due to check into hotels across more than 2,000 cities worldwide on the first day of the holiday.

Popular short-haul destinations included Bangkok, Seoul, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, while travel products for Europe, South America, Australia and New Zealand reportedly saw increases of more than 40 per cent year-on-year.

According to a Nikkei Asia report, citing data from Tongcheng Travel, the most popular outbound travel destinations during this year’s Golden Week holidays were Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul.

It said that no Japanese city made it into the top 10.

There is another Asian country, however, that seems to have gained more Chinese tourists this Golden Week. According to the latest data, Thailand was seeing renewed interest from Chinese holidaymakers ahead of the Golden Week.

Earlier in September, the Tourism Authority of Thailand said that the country expected about 250,000 Chinese visitors during this year’s holiday period – 24 per cent more than during the same period in 2025.

Tourism authority governor Thapanee Kiatphaibool said the Chinese market was showing increasingly clear signs of recovery ahead of the holiday. Thailand is expected to generate about 11.5 billion baht ($350m) in tourism revenue from Chinese visitors during the period, a 37 per cent increase from a year earlier, according to The Bangkok Post.