Abstract In 1978, Deng Xiao-Ping introduced economic reforms and the open-door policy in China. Since then, the Chinese government started to recognize tourism as a means to economic development and modernisation. Chinese outbound tourism has been managed and regulated by the Approved Destination Status (ADS) system, which is based on bilateral tourism agreement between China and overseas destinations. The ratio-to-moving average technique and Box-Jenkins (1970) univariate time series modelling are used to analyse Chinese tourist arrival patterns to Australia for the period 1984-2004. Tests for stationarity in the time series of tourist arrivals are also conducted.