Chinese Tourists
At the world's great monuments, it's not just the souvenirs that are made in China. It's also—increasingly— the crowds. In 2007, some 30 million citizens of the People's Republic traveled abroad; by the end of this decade, that number is expected to hit 100 million. (America should be especially popular: Thanks to a freshly inked travel treaty between the two countries, more than half a million Chinese a year are predicted by 2011, up from 66,000 in 1990.) The typical one- to two-week itinerary often burns through a new city or country every day, hitting all the traditional photo ops—tallyho, British Museum! g'day, Sydney Opera House!—and leaving plenty of time for shopping at the flagship stores of Rolex and Vuitton. Even the Chinese, it seems, are wary of knockoffs."

Photographed by Massimo Vitali at Rome's Arch of Constantine and Colosseum on May 8, 2008

Paul Kagame
President of Rwanda
How do you put a country back together again after 800,000 of its citizens—nearly one out of ten, and most from the Tutsi tribe—have been brutally murdered by their Hutu neighbors? That is the question former Tutsi rebel leader Kagame confronted when he assumed the presidency in 2000, six years after the genocide first erupted. His answer: clean up corruption, develop the economy, and ban all divisionist talk. He rules with an iron hand, and his countrymen have fallen into line. Ask a Rwandan whether he is Hutu or Tutsi today and you will be told, "We are all Rwandans now." To some, Kagame is part of the problem—a throwback to the nation's twentieth-century authoritarian tradition. But to many in the international-aid community, he is the country's best hope. Under Kagame, Rwanda's economy has grown an impressive five to nine percent a year, and one of his key drives has been tourism, particularly around the magnificent gorilla reserves along the mountainous northern border (see The Week of (Not) Living Dangerously"). In 2007, 39,000 travelers visited Rwanda—a 26 percent increase over 2006. The hope is that Ka-game can set an example for the troubled continent by maintaining peace and stability, while at the same time promoting development, democracy, and true freedom."