Although still below Japanese and Korean, each year more Chinese citizens walk the pilgrimage route
The Camino de Santiago is achieving greater demand among Chinese citizens; a community that is experiencing a remarkable growth in recent years, despite being small and still be below South Korea and Japan, but increasingly closer to achieving the latter. As for Asian communities, the South Koreans are the most numerous, sneaking in the top 10 of 2015 that more pilgrims provide countries with 4,073, while the Japanese are placed at the 21st place with 1,197 pilgrims.
China is still the 30th country in number of pilgrims, but the growing popularity of the pilgrimage route is increasing in recent years; of the 520 of 2014 it was passed to 706 in 2015. During the first half of this year 346 Chinese pilgrims had traveled the Camino de Santiago before entering the peak summer season, so this 2016 growth could continue. In general, the profile of these pilgrims usually coincides with the exchange students or workers in Chinese companies based in Europe.
Chinese pilgrims increased in recent years brings a bit to the increasing internationalization of the Camino de Santiago, where the Spanish pilgrims were already minority in 2015 (46.63%) compared to the pilgrims from abroad (53, 37%) of the cualtes, Asians still account for less than 2.5%. Italians, Germans and Americans swept the podium of no Spanish pilgrims on the pilgrimage route last year.