I agree with Tom69 that it does sound like discrimination if a company treats you differently from its other customers for whatever reason. If like him, you don't like the way a company treats you by all means choose another company to do business with.

Last time I checked there were a myriad of airlines in China and it's not necessary to fly in China at all, if you don't want to. There are an increasing number of bullet trains, or you could catch normal trains or buses or even drive if you have a Chinese license, totally up to you.

If flying internationally to or from China, simply fly with an international carrier. I've never flown to China on a Chinese airline, simply because I know their service stinks when compared to their international competitors. Even a close Chinese friend of mine only ever flies THAI to Bangkok, never China Eastern since their service sucks, so go figure.

@Tom69 blablabla, you don't get it right? The price you pay is the normal one ;) so you are not extra charged. But maybe the Chinese government wants to subsidized their own citizens. That does not mean because you pay more they get it cheaper. But you pay the normal price and the airline gets the normal price for them through some government subsidizing. Whatever. Maybe they want to target certain passenger groups with special advertisement. Why isn't that legit? Of course "companies should be interested in making profits not subsidizing the cost of someone's travels just because of the way they look" holds. What if they get money from the state or have less costs carrying a Chinese national? What if in the end they make the same profit carrying you or a Chinese citizen? But you have to pay the higher prize because carrying you costs them more? Wouldn't it be more unfair if you pay the same price as Chines citizens but they have higher costs with you? (which means they are subsidizing your flight with the Chinese passengers paying more than they cost). you get this?

And no, travellign in Australia for 3 months I was ripped off all the time because I am not Australian.. having a different native language, even though being "white" clearly changes the price you have to pay for hostels, etc in Australia. For my friends from Asian countries it was even worse. We check in together and they have to pay more than me...

And, please tell me a country which has more than a handfull of million of inhabitants which does not somehow discriminate foreigners from national citizens ;) ?!

14x again your defending the Chinese government's practices and giving some example about how you were ripped off in a foreign country, this time of all places Australia. Where are you from? And btw Australia is a multicultural country not a "white" country as you seem to claim, even though many of the visible minorities just moved there in the last 30-40 years, but many if not most are now considered Australian.
Hmm...I wonder where you got stung there?

You are being a bit too cynical here...China is certainly not the only country that has these kind of policies in place. I wish it were different but maybe if enough people complained they would change things...or then again maybe not.

Again it's a good thing that we can choose whom to deal with in a capitalist economy such as China. In the past there may have only been one state owned option, now there are many options including private ones. Thank god for capitalism I guess you could say. Anyway, end of discussion dude.

Your ranting is not going to convince me so lets be civil and let me be the last person to have a say on this matter. I am a consumer and I don't like the policies here so I won't be using the services of such companies. There may be many reasons that companies have policies like this but I for one don't want to do business with them.

Are you some kind of marketing manager for China Eastern airlines or a government mouthpiece or something? Who are you? Please....give it a rest buddy. End of discussion. Like the OP said...he was surprised about this policy so I think everyone has made their points fair and square.

Interesting discussion. I've never heard of these special discount and nor has my wife (chinese). I've always booked tickets through elong and ctrip and got whatever discount was showing. Both the chinese and english sites show the same discounts. On a slightly unrelated note I've recently discovered www.travelzen.com - they have all the same discounts as elong and ctrip but the site is much more equipped to taking international credit cards. Elong and Ctrip both charge 3% and require a fax or scan of passport and credit cards. Travelzen takes payment in RMB for local cards or HKD for international cards (using a normal web payment system that actually works because its outside the mainland).

Charging one price for foreigners and one price for locals is technically illegal in China. Perhaps this is some kind of student or senior citizen fare. China is very bad at applying these kind of discounts across the board. To get student or senior prices you need to have local student or senior ID cards. It was great when we took my father-in-law to London - he got discounted entry into the London Eye, Tower of London etc just by showing his passport. In China you can't even do this in a different city. All the parks in Beijing have discounts for seniors but only Beijing seniors, a Kunming senior would pay full price. So you can't even get government subsidized discounts if you have ID from a different city, let alone a different country. Kind of pathetic really. They should just allow every Chinese student or every Chinese senior citizen to enjoy the same discounts (and even extend that to foreign students and foreign senior citizens). There are surely enough Chinese travelling around the country to ensure that the subsidies even out over time.

yes, there are "special discount," if your chinese is reasonably fluent and then you will learn some tricks from your fellow frequent travellers. especially, if you use long distant buses, certain not rail. i dont know about domestic/overseas airfare, because i book air travel online since eticket becomes standard in china.

i used to travel by bus,when time is not an issue, between guilin, guangxi and shenzhen a lot, i still do every now and then. for example, i can purchase a one way ticket (guilin-shenzhen) at the terminal from the driver direct for cny100, while the locals and anyone else for that matter, who do not know the trick will have pay cny180 at the counter for the same trip.

i find -14x-'s claim about australia very interesting.

i spent 6 years in australia (syd, melb, brisbane,lismore...canberra) before coming to hong kong and china. i have never had any bad feeling about the locals. when i was there, i heard more stories about chinese business owners, like gift shops, travel agents and guesthouse-keepers ( oh, they are australian too, i have to add) ripping off their mainland compatriots. i would love to hear in details how -14x- got ripped off in oz so i can learn something.

I agree with you there rejected_goods. Looking over both 14x and tom69s posts I see that 14x is trying to defend the practices of some companies to charge foreigners and locals differently, which as Greginchina notes is illegal, while tom69 simply feels there is something genuinely wrong with this practise, noting that he doesn't want to use the services of companies that practice this kind of system. Fair enough. Let him decide.

It's a free country after all! No, actually, I'm wrong, haha...and freedom of speech or opinions are not highly valued either in China but these kind of forums seem to be devices for foreigners to give their opinions earnestly since they may not dare do so in person...

Anyway, being a Thai-American myself, I have seen both sides of the coin. In America, trying to charge any group differently would be interpreted as discrimination (although it is commonplace to charge students, young people and elderly people less for many things since they earn less money, interestingly, this is not common here in China where they supposedly really respect the elderly).

In Thailand I have heard of foreigners being overcharged sometimes for little things such as when bargaining at markets, or maybe it's coz foreigners don't attempt to bargain that they get ripped off. Similarly, for those tourists (and expats) that choose to drive in Thailand, particularly motorcycles, if stopped by the police for various traffic offenses they often just pay whatever the police asks for, rather than bargain it down to 100 Baht (as opposed to the 1000 Baht the police requests). I keep telling my foreigner friends to just pay 100 Baht but to them 1000 Baht and the chance of avoiding having to pay a ticket seems easier...perhaps that's whats implied by getting ripped off here, but the Thai government, no matter which one it is would never do something to discourage tourism, such as create different airfares for foreigners compared to locals since tourism is very important for the successive Thai governments and locals hold a high view of the west...sure there are some instances where such things occur, such as at national parks and some "tourist" temples, but those price differentials are modest and tourists don't have to visit these attractions anyway.

Also, I've been to Australia too and I agree with you rejected_goods that some Chinese owned tourist stores and eateries such as restaurants may actually try to rip off their mainland Chinese customers, but I doubt anyone else in Australia would be attempting to do so, so I too would be interested in knowing what 14x means when he claims he was ripped off there.

Ok, I wanted Tom69 to have the last word as he wanted but I feel I have to reply again:

First I think one should disentangle the whole issue:
1) There are cultures/countries where bargain plays a big role, the price you get often depends on how much you try to get it lower and often how much fun for both of you you make out of the whole bargaining. This I don't call being ripped off... If you feel you should pay too much just walk away, usually they come running after you and offer you a better acceptable price. Still locals get a better price as they have old connections and the other person selling in one case also gets a better price buying from the other person the next time..

2) If you buy material goods and buy a different price just because the way you look etc and there is no bargaining involved but there are fixed prices, I would call it a ripp off / discrimination.

3) If you buy a service, eg a flight, stay at a hotel there might be different prices for licenses and different efforts for the airline, hotel, rental company. If they make the customer pay a higher price than other customers because for him they have higher costs it is not a ripp off for me. Wouldn't it be more unfair if other customers would pay the same price? In the end it would mean the company would make less profit with foreigners than with locals... quite the opposite you are claiming.

As for the validity of the extra licenses + efforts which come through government regulations.. I guess at least some of it is for higher security or that the police knows where you are in some unfortunate events. Of course there always tends to be overregulations and I am not a big fan of too much government control as well.

4) Clear ripp offs: You are in a situation where you have to pay any price the company asks you to pay just because you would be stranded somewhere. Or (what happend often to me in OZ) a hostel or company tells me a price for a night to stay there but after paying says if I want a pillow and bedding i have to pay another 3$, oh and the key for the hot water shower is extra 5$ of which you get 3 back when you return it... other examples would be you pay for something and later have to pay extra fees you were not told off up-front.

5) Another interesting case (it partly belongs to other groups above):
If you want to get stamps from Chinese government offices for international purposes there are lists for each country how much you have to pay for basically the same service. The Chinese government wants foreigners to pay as much for a service as Chinese citizens would pay at that specific country. This even applies to Chinese ciitzens married to foreigners who have to pay the same high foreigner price. I even thought about going to court about this one as I find it partly unacceptable (especially the married to foreigners high price policy).

Wrap up: I don't want to defend government policies, far from it. What I claim is just that there are different issues involved. I see it that one has to accept certain government regulations in a country where one is a guest. For example that they want to know where you stay, that they have certain extra regulations for hotels and airlines. I understand if hotels and airlines don't want to pay these extra costs and make foreign customers pay for it (like I said, if they don't in the they make less profit with foreigners than with locals). And like I said before: Only some companies do this, just use another one, eg local travel agency (never had that issue there).. and the things in OZ usually happend the more far you get away from Sydney/Melbourne for me.. I did work and travel, so I ended up in lots of places like outback meat factories where the people where definitely not that educated and referred to aborigines as monkeys and even worse. But yes, all in all OZ ist a multi-ethnic country and most of it's people are nice and open-minded. But the ones who live more remote and are not that open-minded are often racists and ripp-off people. And in a much worse way than it happens in China..

Ok, I wanted Tom69 to have the last word as he wanted but I feel I have to reply again:

First I think one should disentangle the whole issue:
1) There are cultures/countries where bargain plays a big role, the price you get often depends on how much you try to get it lower and often how much fun for both of you you make out of the whole bargaining. This I don't call being ripped off... If you feel you should pay too much just walk away, usually they come running after you and offer you a better acceptable price. Still locals get a better price as they have old connections and the other person selling in one case also gets a better price buying from the other person the next time..

2) If you buy material goods and buy a different price just because the way you look etc and there is no bargaining involved but there are fixed prices, I would call it a ripp off / discrimination.

3) If you buy a service, eg a flight, stay at a hotel there might be different prices for licenses and different efforts for the airline, hotel, rental company. If they make the customer pay a higher price than other customers because for him they have higher costs it is not a ripp off for me. Wouldn't it be more unfair if other customers would pay the same price? In the end it would mean the company would make less profit with foreigners than with locals... quite the opposite you are claiming.

As for the validity of the extra licenses + efforts which come through government regulations.. I guess at least some of it is for higher security or that the police knows where you are in some unfortunate events. Of course there always tends to be overregulations and I am not a big fan of too much government control as well.

4) Clear ripp offs: You are in a situation where you have to pay any price the company asks you to pay just because you would be stranded somewhere. Or (what happend often to me in OZ) a hostel or company tells me a price for a night to stay there but after paying says if I want a pillow and bedding i have to pay another 3$, oh and the key for the hot water shower is extra 5$ of which you get 3 back when you return it... other examples would be you pay for something and later have to pay extra fees you were not told off up-front.

5) Another interesting case (it partly belongs to other groups above):
If you want to get stamps from Chinese government offices for international purposes there are lists for each country how much you have to pay for basically the same service. The Chinese government wants foreigners to pay as much for a service as Chinese citizens would pay at that specific country. This even applies to Chinese ciitzens married to foreigners who have to pay the same high foreigner price. I even thought about going to court about this one as I find it partly unacceptable (especially the married to foreigners high price policy).

Wrap up: I don't want to defend government policies, far from it. What I claim is just that there are different issues involved. I see it that one has to accept certain government regulations in a country where one is a guest. For example that they want to know where you stay, that they have certain extra regulations for hotels and airlines. I understand if hotels and airlines don't want to pay these extra costs and make foreign customers pay for it (like I said, if they don't in the they make less profit with foreigners than with locals). And like I said before: Only some companies do this, just use another one, eg local travel agency (never had that issue there).. and the things in OZ usually happend the more far you get away from Sydney/Melbourne for me.. I did work and travel, so I ended up in lots of places like outback meat factories where the people where definitely not that educated and referred to aborigines as monkeys and even worse. But yes, all in all OZ ist a multi-ethnic country and most of it's people are nice and open-minded. But the ones who live more remote and are not that open-minded are often racists and ripp-off people. And in a much worse way than it happens in China..