Nevermind that around 90% of hotels in China do not allow foreigners. It was not a fond memory dragging my heavy baggage one place to the next for half a day being rejected all over Beijing (experienced it in Shanghai and Guangzhou too)
Of course the wealthy here would never know, most places priced in the top 20% expensive accept foreigners. I was a poor student and also worked as a teacher($400/mo) looking for midrange accomodations, not to spend a month's pay on a weekend trip
There were two system in the past: hotels for foreigners, designed to take passports and hotels for citizens, taking only IDs. There has been recent national system upgrades, now Chinese can use passport as identification (although still not universally). Since last year, you can use passport to check in high speed rail stations (maybe still not all of them) without queueing up in exchange for a real ticket. The direction is clear. It is a big IT system with different departments, I can imagine the problem will be gone in the future.
Of course the wealthy here would never know, most places priced in the top 20% expensive accept foreigners. I was a poor student and also worked as a teacher($400/mo) looking for midrange accomodations, not to spend a month's pay on a weekend trip