Abstract：Inbound tourism in China has rapidly developed since the launch of the open-door and economic reform policy in 1978. Nowadays China has been one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. However, there is a great spatial-temporal differentiation in the development of inbound tourism in China. This paper aims at the determining factors of explaining the differentiation mechanisms of Chinese inbound tourism in terms of different development stages by using systems estimator method. Taking the annual foreign exchange incomes of each province as the indicator of inbound tourism, this paper uses regression analysis method to judge the main influential factors which contribute greatly to the spatial-temporal differentiation and chooses five quantitative indexes to elucidate this differentiation. The five quantitative in dexes respectively are economic development level, tour resources, location conditions, inertial factor and favorable policies. Two kinds of quantitative models, CSM1 and CSM2, are set up to make a regression analysis of the five stages of inbound tourism in China separately and get nine regression equations. By analyzing the results of model equations thoroughly, some mechanisms to drive the spatial-temporal differentiations of inbound tourism in China are found. Therefore, the analyses show the clear development stage characteristics of spatial-temporal differentiation of inbound tourism in China.
