Tourism governance and sustainable national development in China: a macro-level synthesis

Abstract

This paper explores the macro-governance of the growth of China's tourism industry into the world's largest domestic tourist industry and the fourth largest international destination. It explains distinctive aspects of the political and economic changes that have driven China's tourism over the last 30 years. These include a gradualist approach to transition/transformation, the re-birth of entrepreneurship and the market economy, structural change and the retention but evolution of governance by the Chinese Communist Party. It also explains the power of China's 4000-year-old cultural and philosophical heritage that plays a key role in contemporary tourism governance and planning, with a special emphasis on Confucian/Daoist thought, shan shui, feng shui and te-zhi, and the Chinese search for harmony and a middle way. The paper charts the emergence of the concept of sustainable development for the economy as a whole, and since 1995, for tourism development, despite significant tensions between China's drive for “modernization” and “progress” rather than sustainable development. Sustainable tourism development is shown to have had positive influences on transport, wildlife and natural heritage conservation and regional development. The concept of tourism as a “keystone industry”, analogous to ecology's concept of a “keystone species”, is explored.