Chinese travelers are seeing the USA in record numbers
Eager to spend their growing disposable income, travelers from mainland China's wealthy and rising middle classes are traversing the globe in search of iconic destinations they can cross off their bucket lists.
That wanderlust has increasingly brought them to a dream destination, the USA, in recent years as travel restrictions on them eased. Despite occasional economic and political dust-ups between the two nations' governments, a record number of Chinese visitors came to the U.S. in 2011.
Steps announced last month by President Obama to speed up visas for them should result in even more Chinese arrivals, further unlocking a huge source of income that the U.S. travel industry and retail business sector have long coveted.