China loves its copycat towns: from a replica of Shakespeare’s home to the boulevards of Paris

The planned replica of Stratford-upon-Avon in southeast China is just the latest example of a trend that has seen fairy tale castles, Italian renaissance cities and even a mini Paris built halfway around the world

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The replica Eiffel Tower in eastern China, left, is smaller than the original. Photo: Architecturaldigest.com

Published: 2:00pm, 7 Oct 2018Updated: 4:42pm, 7 Oct 2018

The planned replicas of Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon to be built in southeast China are the latest in a long line of Chinese replica tourist towns that have attracted a mixture of amusement and derision worldwide.

Local authorities have promised that this town will be “authentic” and therefore different from the dodgy Chinese replicas that have been previously mocked, including a copy of London’s Tower Bridge in Suzhou with a motorway running through the middle.

But why are uncanny tourist towns so common in China?

In the past decade, China has seen an unprecedented boom in foreign and domestic travel which has seen tourists flocking to virtually every imaginable destination around the world.

The growth is so staggering that China will account for a quarter of international tourism by 2030, according to the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute.

The Chinese reconstruction of the Austrian village of Hallstatt in Huizhou. Photo: Baidu

But for now, domestic tourism continues to be a popular choice since only 8.7 per cent of the Chinese population currently hold passports, according to data from China’s Ministry of Public Security.

Domestic travel alone contributed 9.13 trillion yuan (US$1.3 trillion) to China’s gross domestic product in 2017, figures from the China National Tourism Administration show, making the industry a major driver of Chinese economic growth.