As the number of Chinese tourists has soared from almost nil a few years ago to a world-leading 83 million last year, so has their reputation for rudeness and objectionable behaviour.

Their image is so bad that hotels from Thailand to Paris will not accept Chinese tourists, and the Beijing government is planning to introduce in October a law to regulate travellers’ behaviour.

At a recent national conference on the coming tourism law one of China’s four vice-premiers, Wang Yang, lamented the “uncivilized behaviour” of some Chinese tourists.

Their displays of lack of “quality and breeding” have “damaged the image of Chinese people and caused vicious impact,” Wang said in a report published by the government-run People’s Daily newspaper.

“Improving the civilized quality of the citizens and building a good image of Chinese tourists are the obligations of governments at all levels and relevant agencies and companies,” said Wang.

It’s unclear how the Chinese law can be applied to tourists abroad. But a state-controlled newspaper, Global Times, quoted a tour operator as saying “It would be helpful to have legal grounds when communicating with clients about their behaviour in the future, giving us some power to restrain them.”

Wang, a former Communist Party boss of Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong, said the main complaints against Chinese tourists are “talking loudly in public places, jaywalking, spitting and wilfully carving characters in scenic zones.”

People around the world who have contact with Chinese tourists report many other pieces of unseemly behaviour including not flushing toilets, ignoring no smoking signs, flouting traffic laws, littering, elbowing their way to the front of lineups, and allowing children to urinate or defecate in public.

But this is all undoubtedly a passing phase that stems from China’s rapid growth from being a largely peasant society to the world’s second largest economy by some measurements.

It is not as though it is a unique phenomenon.

When the United States’ postwar economic boom allowed middle class Americans to go globe-trotting their behaviour quickly became the object of anger and derision.

The “Ugly American” tourist became a caricature who only travelled to reinforce his or her suspicion that the rest of the world was a dirty and threatening place.

The only safe way for an American to travel, so the generalization went, was within five minutes drive of the nearest Hilton hotel.

For the most part this clichéd national image has faded with the Americans’ years of experience of foreign travel.

But the Chinese are just at the beginning of this cycle.

Chinese tourists spent an estimated $102 billion last year, but some of these nouveau riche lack any sophistication to cushion the impact of their wealth.

They have become used to their money getting them what they want and can become loud and angry if thwarted.

In this their behaviour abroad is the same as their behaviour at home.

At a more benign level, some apparently rude behaviour by Chinese tourists is simply from ignorance of local customs rather than arrogant self-regard.