INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH
Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 439–450 (2009)
Published online 30 December 2008 in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.712
Rural Tourism Development in China
Shunli Gao1, Songshan Huang2,* and Yucheng Huang3
1
The Coordination Department, China National Tourism Administration, Beijing, China
2
School of Management, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
3
Tourism and Event Management School, Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade, Shanghai, China
ABSTRACT
This paper provides an overview and brief
evaluation of China’s rural tourism.
Beginning with the form of poverty
alleviation through tourism, China’s rural
tourism has undergone over 20 years of
development and exhibited some unique
features in its development pattern, scale
and business operational models in
accordance with China’s political, social and
economic systems. Government plays a
decisive role in developing rural tourism in
China. However, rural tourism has been
valued mainly as an economic means for
rural development during the country’s
modernisation process. Overlooking rurality
as an essential issue in rural tourism may
lead development to a wrong direction,
which could jeopardise the sustainability of
the industry. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley
& Sons, Ltd.
Received 25 January 2008; Revised 6 November 2008; Accepted
11 November 2008
Keywords: rural tourism; China.
INTRODUCTION
R
ural tourism is a popular topic in tourism
research both in China and inter-
nationally. However, it seems that
Chinese tourism researchers are not exchang-
ing their research outputs in this particular
research area effectively with their interna-
*Correspondence to: S. Huang, School of Management,
University of South Australia, Elton Mayo Building EM3-
17, City West Campus, North Terrace, Adelaide, SA 5000,
Australia.
E-mail: sam.huang@unisa.edu.au
tional counterparts. While a burgeoning
literature on many aspects of China tourism
(e.g. Lew and Yu, 1995; Xiao, 1997; Zhang et al.,
1999; Pine, 2002; Lew et al., 2003; Zhang et al.,
2005) is easily available to the international
tourism academic community, apparently,
there still exists a relative dearth of research
into rural tourism development in China by
scholars outside China. In contrast, due
research attention has been paid to rural
tourism in an exclusively dedicated issue of
the International Journal of Tourism Research in
2004 (Sharpley and Roberts, 2004), which had
a similar endeavour to that of a special edition
of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism 10 years
earlier. Geographically, research in rural
tourism published in international tourism
journals covers mostly Europe, North America
and Australasia, while China seems to have
been left out.
Rural tourism is largely a domestic
phenomenon with a disparate nature across
countries and continents (Gartner, 2004;
Sharpley and Roberts, 2004). This explains why
the current literature in rural tourism has seen
a significant number of case studies in terms of
countries and rural tourism attractions in
different countries. Despite the specificity of
rural tourism to a country’s political, economic
and social systems, issues of definition and
conceptualisation have been sought (Lane,
1989, 1994a, 1994b; Sweeney, 1995). Lane
(1994b) suggests that rural tourism, as a concept,
is a form of tourism that is located in rural
areas, is rural in scale, character and function,
reflecting the differing and complex pattern
of rural environment, economy, history and
location. Sharpley and Roberts (2004) also
concluded that two other themes could be
identified for rural tourism research. They are
rural tourism as ‘sustainable’ activity and rural
tourism as an agent of rural development. The
disciplinary knowledge in rural tourism
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
440
appears to have been accumulated in an
inductive way by adding new cases from
different countries.
China is a country with a dominant rural
population. According to the National Bureau
of Statistics of China (NBSC), China’s rural
population in 2006 was 737.4 million, accounting
for 56.1% of the country’s total population
(NBSC, 2007). Despite the nation’s continuous
modernisation efforts, rural development has
remained one of the priorities of the nation’s
social and economic development policies. The
‘Three Nong’ issues, which refer to issues of
agriculture, farmer and rural area, have been
frequently listed on the national government’s
top agendas. It is commonly believed that
China’s economic reform started from the rural
areas. As the first bold policy step to break the
bond of the totalitarian planning economy
system, the household production contract
system was initiated in rural communities in
late 1970s. A household production contract
encourages average rural households to
increase their productivity. A typical contract
would set up quotas for households to give
part of their annual production to the country
and the collective organisation they belong to,
as the compensation for the arable land lease.
Once a household can fulfil the quota, they can
get any extra amount of their production for
their own consumption. As a result, rural living
conditions were improved significantly, and
the development gap between urban and rural
areas was reduced. However, starting from
1985, the nation’s economic development
strategies changed and the national income
distribution system once again started to
favour city-dwellers. Consequently, the pace
of rural development was slowed down.
In the late 1980s, some Chinese scholars
reviewed China’s socialist development and
modernisation process and classified the
problems and issues with rural development
as ‘agriculture’, ‘farmer’ and ‘rural area’,
shortly as ‘Three Nong’ issues, for the three
words in Chinese all begin with ‘Nong’. The
‘Three Nong’ issues have since become an
analytical framework to solve problems arising
from China’s rural development for both the
government and academics (Lu, 2004).
For a long time, tourism policies have been
formulated to facilitate the development of
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
S. Gao et al.
rural regions. Rural tourism, as a means to
spur the country’s rural economy and social
development, has been attached great
importance by tourism authorities at both
national and provincial levels (Shao, 2007a). In
2006, the volume of China’s domestic tourism
reached 1.39 billion, making China the largest
domestic tourism market in Asia (China
National Tourism Administration (CNTA),
2007a). Although no statistical data are available
to show the share and weight of rural tourism
in China’s huge domestic tourism market,
considering most of China’s scenic attractions
and spots are located in western and rural
areas, rural tourism must be a significant part
in the domestic tourism.
In the late 1980s, some researchers in China
started to study tourism in parallel with agri-
culture (Liu D., 1989). They define the term
‘tourism agriculture’ as tourism taking agricul-
tural landscape and attractions as objects to
visit. Liu Ming’s study (Liu M., 1989) com-
bined the agricultural activities with tourist
experiences and for the first time broke through
the boundary of sightseeing tourism. However,
his research was mainly limited to the field of
‘agriculture’ but not studying ‘rural’ tourism
in a broader sense. In 1990, Ling used the
concept of ‘rural tourism’, which meant tourism
development over rural landscapes and attrac-
tions, when he advocated the development of
rural tourism resources (Ling, 1990).
In the end of 1990s, Wang (1999) introduced
rural tourism research undertaken by overseas
tourism scholars and systematically elaborated
on the conceptual aspects of rural tourism. Yin
(2004) conducted a literature review on rural
tourism in China based on relevant articles in
the China Academic Journals Full-text Database
and found that from 1997 to 2003, among 9000
articles in tourism research, only 60 articles
were relevant to rural tourism. Regretfully, the
research outputs regarding rural tourism in
China have been published mainly in Chinese
and thus cannot be effectively communicated
to international readers.
Although rural tourism is significant in
China in both its current scale and develop-
ment potential, the international academic
community has gained little knowledge in this
field. This paper aims to introduce China’s
rural tourism development and practices to the
Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 439–450 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/jtr
Rural Tourism Development in China
international audience and can be regarded as
the first attempt to enrich the literature in rural
tourism with an additional case from China. In
addition to presenting an overview of China’s
rural tourism development, the authors also
intend to evaluate China’s rural tourism
policies and practices using Sharpley and
Roberts’s (2004) three themes as an analytical
framework. In the next section, the historical
development of rural tourism in China is
reviewed. After that, the current state of rural
tourism is discussed. The major achievements,
experiences and problem of developing rural
tourism in China are presented subsequently.
China has been practising a government-led
tourism development strategy. As can be seen
from this paper, governments at all levels have
played a leading role in developing China’s
rural tourism. After noting rural tourism policy
directions, the three themes of rural tourism
development (Sharpley and Roberts, 2004) are
discussed to evaluate China’s rural tourism
practices.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
Unlike countries in Europe and North America
where rural tourism has a history of
approximately 100 years, China did not start
its rural tourism until the early 1980s. Rural
tourism development first took the form of
poverty alleviation through tourism (PAT). The
initial standard to define poverty or poverty
line was calculated by the government after
surveying rural residents’ family expenditures.
The standard was set as an annual per
capita income of 206 RMB in 1985 and was
equivalent to an annual per capita income of
625 RMB in 2000. The government-defined
poverty population in China had been reduced
from 250 million in 1978 to 30 million in 2000
(The State Council Leading Group Office of
Poverty Alleviation and Development, 2006).
PAT was initiated in the early 1980s (Yuan,
1985; Zhu, 1987; Shao, 2007b). The original
PAT-related activities, probably without any
government intention, were derived by rural
residents’ spontaneous business behaviours to
improve their living conditions. After the
opening-up and reform policies were adopted
in 1979, farmers in China were given more
freedom for their agricultural production and
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
441
other economic activities. Some farmers would
be able to seek additional incomes from non-
agriculture fields. Farmers who reside around
famous tourist attractions had the opportunities
to earn some money by providing a variety of
services to tourists. They could operate small-
scale tourism businesses and services based on
tourist attractions around their residential
areas. The business types and services provided
include family-run hostels, restaurants, short-
distance transportation, retailing,
photographing, horse renting and rickshaw
services (Gao, 1997). These small businesses
involving farmers complemented the entire
tourism supply system that state-owned
tourism enterprises could not fully cover.
Later, some village-level authorities
and individual farmers gradually joined the
development of rural attractions and became
the major players of rural tourism development
and operation. These spontaneous PAT-related
business activities were gradually recognised
by local tourism authorities and it was realised
that tourism can help alleviate poverty in rural
areas. In the early 1990s, responding to the
central government’s call on poverty alleviation,
some provincial tourism authorities actively
integrated the organisation, promotion and
guidance of local tourism development under
their jurisdiction into the broad government
agenda of poverty alleviation, generating quite
impressive economic benefits and social
impacts (Li, 2008). Examples representing these
efforts were Yesanpo in Lai Shui, Hebei
Province (CNTA, 2006), Emai Mountain in
Sichuan Province (Ji, 1985), Ancient Cave of
Alu in Yunnan Province (Yang, 1993) and the
town of Huangguoshu in Guizhou Province.
In 1996, CNTA and The State Council
Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation
and Development jointly held the national
conference on poverty alleviation through
tourism in Zhangjiajie of Hunan Province,
which was a hallmark event in the rural tourism
development in China (Gao, 2008). According
to statistical data reported by provincial
tourism authorities to the CNTA, 10 000 villages
nationwide had lifted themselves out of
poverty by developing tourism in 1996;
the same year also saw a population of
approximately 3 million people being released
from poverty-stricken living conditions because
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DOI: 10.1002/jtr
442
of tourism development (Gao, 2008). In August
2000, the CNTA set up the first PAT experimental
zone in Xihaigu, Ningxia, which is called
Liupanshan PAT Experimental Zone. Later
the guidelines of establishing national PAT
experimental zone were formally adopted on
the national tourism work conference in 2002,
strengthening the importance of PAT on the
CNTA’s agendas (Li, 2008)
A second phenomenon that emerged from
the rural tourism development in China is the
Happy Farmer’s Home (HFH) (Nongjiale in
Chinese) products. As a cluster of rural tourism
products, the HFH had an early beginning.
Since the early 1990s, it has become a popular
rural tourism product for the mass market
(Shao, 2007a). With nearly 15 years of
development, the HFH still appears to be a
vigorously growing rural tourism sub-sector.
The HFH represents a form of rural tourism
products invested and operated by individual
farmers and mainly offers tourist dining and
accommodation services. As a new term in
China’s tourism lexicon, the basic meaning of
HFH is to experience and enjoy the happiness
of rural life. The HFH has the following salient
characteristics: first, it serves the mass tourism
market in China from a market perspective;
second, it should be classified as a leisure and
holiday product; third, it is a complementary
tourism product surrounding core tourist
attractions and large-scale tourism provisions.
Other features of the HFH developments
include: farmers as investors and operators,
large range of product qualities and scales,
and huge number of provisions. Most of the
HFH provisions are simple dining and
accommodation services and remain in low
quality. However, there are also a number of
branded HFH products such as Happy Orchid
of Plum (Xingfumeilin) in Chengdu, Sichuan
Province and villages with ancient style
buildings at the foot of Huangshan Mountain
in Anhui Province (Gao, 2007). The number of
the HFH provisions in the country is not
available right now because of a lack of accurate
statistical procedures for rural tourism facilities.
Some provinces reported a rough estimation of
over 50 000 HFH provisions; most provinces
might have 20 000 to 30 000 HFH provisions.
It should be noted that some extended forms
of HFH have emerged in recent years. These
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
S. Gao et al.
extended versions of HFH include Happy
Fishermen’s Home in coastal areas, folk culture
tours in rural suburbs of Beijing, ethnic village
tours in Guizhou Province and the HFH
products in the living areas of ethnic minorities
such as Tibetans, Miaos and Dai People (Gao,
2007).
The following reasons can be identified for
the fast spread of HFH provisions in China.
First, the function of tourism as a tool for
pulling farmers out of poverty has been
commonly acknowledged. An increasing
number of farmers have realised that developing
rural tourism facilities such as HFH would put
them in better living conditions than running
other businesses. Second, mass consumerism
in tourism has created a huge market for rural
tourism. China’s steady and fast economic
growth and social development has enabled
urban residents to take leisure and holiday
activities in rural areas. Third, the 2-day
weekend system and the three Golden holiday
weeks provide Chinese people with sufficient
holidays for tourism consumption. The HFH
products can suit the mass tourism needs and
thus become increasingly popular. Fourth,
the HFH projects are small and require
less investment. They are more suitable for
individual farming households to invest in and
operate (Gao, 2008).
In the mid-1990s, China began to adopt a
system officially establishing 5 work days
per week, which obviously propelled the
development of holiday tourism. The newly
emerged tourist market requested some non-
traditional tourism products. At the same time,
with the restructuring of rural industries,
relocating extra labour of rural areas appeared
to be a prominent problem. The govern-
ment hoped to combine new agricultural
development forms with tourism in order to
solve the problem. In the 2001 national tourism
work conference, Vice Premier Qian Qichen
noted that in the new century, tourism’s
function in leading the development of other
industries should be stressed; tourism
development should help facilitate the
improvement of the structure of national
economy; as implementation measures, some
projects of rural tourism, eco-tourism and
mountain tourism around suburban and rural
areas could be planned and constructed
Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 439–450 (2009)
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Rural Tourism Development in China
(Sun, 2006). Following the conference, the
CNTA started to advocate and promote the
Rural Tourism Demonstration Examples (RTDEs).
The RTDEs are tourist attractions that take the
themes of agricultural production process,
rural lifestyles, and farmers’ work and life
scenarios and have a demonstration effect
nationwide. The range of RTDEs has also
extended into other related industries such as
forestry, husbandry and fishery. The major
policy for the RTDEs is the National Standards
on the Evaluation of Industrial and Rural Tourism
Examples (Trial Version), which was promulgated
by the CNTA in 2002 (CNTA, 2002). The
Standards is an important policy instrument
for China’s rural tourism development.
Specifically, it includes the following evaluation
categories: number of visitor arrivals and
economic return, social benefits, ecological and
environment benefits, tourism products,
infrastructure, management, operation, safety,
accessibility and development potential. Rural
tourism attractions or facilities can take a self-
assessment following the criteria and improve
their products or services wherever necessary.
Once the minimal scores have been achieved,
they can submit an application to provincial
tourism authorities. The CNTA will conduct a
final assessment after a rural tourism entity
has passed the assessment conducted by a
provincial tourism authority. The total score
for all the evaluation categories/items is 1000.
In addition, a bonus score of up to 50 could
also be granted. Rural tourism enterprises
scoring 700 or above can be labelled as a
National Rural Tourism Demonstration
Example. As a favourable policy, applicants
from western provinces can secure the title
with a score of 650 or above (CNTA, 2002). By
the end of 2007, a total of 474 RTDEs have been
publicised in three batches. The advocacy and
promotion of RTDEs has facilitated the mutual
utilisation and development of both tourism
and agriculture.
In 2006, in order to effectively implement the
national strategy of establishing new socialist
rural communities, the CNTA adopted work
guidelines of vigorously developing rural
tourism. ‘China Rural Tourism’ was also used
as the year’s tourism promotion theme. To
clarify the principles, development foci and
objectives, the CNTA issued the Guidelines for
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
443
Rural Tourism Development. In 2007, to further
the development of rural tourism, the CNTA
set the annual promotion theme as China’s City
and Countryside Harmony Tour. It also signed an
agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture
(MoA) to jointly promote rural tourism
development and the construction of new
socialist rural communities. The two central
government agencies have planned to gradually
present 100 counties, 1000 townships and
10 000 villages as rural tourism development
examples during the eleventh 5-year period
(2006–2010). Based on the extensive
investigation on the rural tourism situation,
the CNTA and the MoA have formulated a
series of policy documents to further develop
rural tourism and leisure-based agriculture
(CNTA, 2007b).
CURRENT STATE
Development patterns
Ten development patterns of rural tourism
were identified in the National Rural Tourism
Work Conference in 2006 (CNTA, 2007d).
Table 1 lists all the development patterns and
provides a brief description for each of them.
Examples for each pattern are also presented.
Development scale
Currently, there are no specifically designated
statistics for rural tourism development in
China. However, according to data available
from relevant tourism surveys organised by
the CNTA, it can be estimated that the current
scale of rural tourism in China is very
impressive. We estimate that in 2006 the total
number of visitors received by rural tourism
operators was over 500 million, and the rural
tourism receipts were over 300 billion RMB;
more than 20 000 villages were developed
mainly through involving in rural tourism
operations, and over 6 million rural residents
had benefited from rural tourism development.
By the end of 2007, there had been 574 rural
tourism demonstration samples in all the 31
provinces, municipalities and autonomous
regions of the country. Domestic tourists have
a range of transport means to access rural
tourism attractions: most city-dwellers would
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444
Table 1. Development patterns of rural tourism in China.
No. Development pattern
1 Holiday- and leisure-
oriented rural tourism
businesses
2 Tourism operations
depended on neighbouring
large-scale and well-
known attractions
3 Tourism operations in
some historical and
cultural towns
4 Folk culture villages
5 Tourism operations driven
by ethnic culture and
traditions
6 Tourism operations led by
agricultural plantations
and processing
7 Modernised rural
community areas
8 Agro-tourism sites
9 Ecological rural tourism
attractions
10 Heritages and historical
sites for the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP)
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Description
Can also be called the
Happy Farmers’ Home
Tourism products and
services depending on the
neighbouring major
attractions’ source market
Tourism accommodation
services and other facilities
in small towns with
historical remains and
cultural heritages
Rural tourism operations
based on well-preserved
ecological environment,
landscape and folk
cultures in these villages
Rural tourism taking
ethnic culture and unique
lifestyles as main
attractions, mainly located
in remote regions where
ethnic groups live
Rural tourism operations
based on plantations of
fruits, vegetables, tea, etc.
Villages and townships
with well-developed
economy and beautiful
and neat living
environment
Ecological farmlands, hi-
tech agricultural bases,
flower plantations, etc.
Villages with superb
ecological environment
Rural tourism attractions
based on CCP’s historical
and memorial sites
S. Gao et al.
Examples
• Sanshenghua Township, Chengdu,
Sichuan Province
• Tuanjie Township, Kunming, Yunnan
Province
• The Jade Valley in Huangshan
• Shuiji Village, Taining, Fujian
Province
• Tengchong County and Shun
Township, Yunnan Province
• Jiangwan Township, Wuyuan, Jiangxi
Province
• Nanhua Village, Kaili, Guizhou
Province
• Likeng Village, Wuyuan, Jiangxi
Province
• Hala New Village, Heilongjiang
Province
• Dai Village, Xishuangbanna, Yunnan
Province
• Pangezhuang Township, Daxing,
Beijing
• Yannanfei Tea Field Resort, Mei
County, Guangdong Province
• Huaxi Village, Jiangyin, Jiangsu
Province
• Hancuihe, Fangshan District, Beijing
• Bagui Garden, Nanning, Guangxi
Autonomous Region
• Dragon Back Terrace Fields in
Longsheng County, Guangxi
Autonomous Region
• Tengtou Village, Fenghua, Zhejiang
Province
• Jiangxiang Village, Changshu, Jiangsu
Province
• Xibopo Township, Pingshan, Hebei
Province
• Paipang Village, Guangan, Sichuan
Province
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Rural Tourism Development in China
take self-driving or suburban train and bus
transportation to travel to suburban rural
areas; long-distance travel to some nationally
well-known rural tourism destinations would
involve train or air transportation.
Operational models
Six operational models can be identified for
rural tourism in China (Gao, 2007). The first
model can be labelled as corporation plus farmer.
In this model, investors set up tourism
development corporations and lease land and
other resources from farmers to develop rural
tourism attractions and facilities; farmers are
involved in the development process by leasing
out their land and house buildings, managing
agricultural plantation activities for the
corporation or sharing the profits as
shareholders. The second model can be labelled
as corporation plus community plus farmer. This
model takes the local community as a nexus
and base. Tourism corporations would first
sign an agreement for cooperation with the
local community authority (e.g. village
committee). Then, the local community
authority would encourage, mobilise and
organise farmers to actively participate in the
tourism operations. The third model is labelled
as government plus corporation plus farmer.
Government agencies take the lead to form
tourism development corporations or invite
outside investors to develop rural tourism
based on the existing resources; local farmers
join the rural tourism system either by
providing tourism-related services or by
operating restaurants and accommodation
facilities. The fourth model takes the form of
individual grange, which is distinct from HFH
in its large size and operation scale. The fifth
model is called farmers’ co-operatives, which
engages farmers in different services (e.g.
dining, accommodation) or service elements in
a flexible way. The sixth model is household-
run small business which is represented by
HFH on a rural household basis.
MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS
Despite a short development history, rural
tourism in China has made a series of
achievements. First, farmers have significantly
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
445
increased their income levels by developing
rural tourism. Farmers can benefit from rural
tourism development directly by operating
family-owned hostels, restaurants and HFHs,
by selling handcrafts or self-produced foods
and agricultural products or by sharing profits
generated from house building and land
contribution, as well as admission fees. Some
mountainous areas, which used to struggle
with poverty, have greatly improved their
social and economic conditions since the
adoption of the strategy of developing rural
tourism. The Jade Valley of Tangkou Township
in Huangshan municipality is a good example.
Thanks to the development of rural tourism,
the village reached an average household
income level of over 30 000 RMB (approximately
US$4150) in 2006 (Gao, 2007). As one of the
benefits brought by tourism development, all
elderly people in the village enjoy a free aged
care for the time being (Gao, 2007). Second,
rural tourism has created large quantities of
re-employment for oversupplied rural labour
without geographic labour relocation. Rural
tourism has been proved to be an effective
means to absorb surplus rural labour and
redirect rural employment to non-agricultural
sectors. To date, rural tourism in China has
created nearly 4 million direct job positions.
Taking account of indirect and seasonal jobs, it
is estimated that over 15 million jobs are
generated because of rural tourism (Shao,
2007b). Third, rural tourism has promoted the
restructuring of the rural industries. Rural
tourism has transformed farmers into tourism
service providers. Agricultural products such
as grains, vegetables, fruits and poultries are
consumed locally by tourists and thus have
increased their added values. Propelled by the
development of rural tourism, ecological
agriculture, sightseeing agriculture and hi-tech
agriculture have also experienced rapid
development. Fourth, rural tourism has
heightened the awareness of ethnic culture
and environment protection. The development
of rural tourism has brought to farmers not
only economic benefits but also new ideas,
thoughts and philosophies. Farmers have
gained a different view on the value of tourism
resources. Along the development process,
they gradually recognise the importance of the
ecological system, historical heritage, ethnic
Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 439–450 (2009)
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446
architecture, folk music and dance, festivals,
and traditional craftsmanship in the
development of tourism and are highly
motivated to preserve and protect some
declining or nearly lost ethnic cultures. Some
heritage sites and cultures in China have been
well preserved because of the development of
rural tourism. Examples include ethnic
household architecture in the border areas
connecting Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan;
Dongba scriptures of Naxi people in Yunnan;
the Grand Singing Ceremony of Dong people
in Guizhou; Jin merchant houses in Shanxi;
and ancient streets in water towns along the
Yangtze River (Shao, 2007b).
Rural tourism development has also led to
some social changes in rural areas. Farmers are
organised in a new system of production
through rural tourism. Some of them have
received service and skills training covering
Mandarin, foreign language, tourism industry
knowledge and computer skills. Involving
themselves in rural tourism, farmers can
increase their ability to adapt to the new
development situation in rural areas and learn
the rules and principles of the country’s
transitional market economy system (Shao,
2007b).
PROBLEMS
A number of common problems can be
identified from the current practices of rural
tourism in China. In some places, rural tourism
products exhibit a high degree of homogeneity
(Tian, 2008), which means that within a certain
geographic area, all rural tourism provisions
take the same product form (e.g. HFH, ancient-
style houses, farms). As a result, rural tourism
operators in the same region face intense
competition from each other and the competition
reduces the profitability and sustainability of
rural tourism businesses. Although rurality is
recognised to be the essence of developing
rural tourism (Sharpley and Roberts, 2004),
one of the trends in developing rural tourism
in China is deviating away from rurality. Some
small business owners and operators in rural
tourism tend to upgrade their tourism product
design, infrastructure, facilities following
urban construction fashion styles and standards.
As new urban-style buildings are emerging
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
S. Gao et al.
with rustic landscape, tourists would naturally
find rural tourism facilities and attractions
less appealing. In the current rural tourism
development stage, to meet the needs of a mass
market, rural tourism provisions are generally
in a primitive form such as simply offering
overnight stays in farmers’ homes, farmland
harvesting and experiencing farmers’ festivals.
However, quality rural tourism attractions
should also be developed to attract international
markets and domestic niche markets.
Rural tourism construction always leads to
ecological degradation and environmental
damage because of a lack of professional planning
and development expertise (Zhou et al., 2008). In
the process of rural tourism planning and
operation, lack of rural community participation
and involvement also leads to local residents’
resentment towards toursim development,
conflicts of interest among stakeholders, and
even social disorders (Liu, 2008).
POLICY DIRECTIONS
From the very beginning, rural tourism in
China was not a complete market-led
phenomenon. The government has played an
important role in directing and promoting
rural tourism development. On the
government’s agenda, rural tourism is related
to other issues in rural areas, such as poverty
alleviation and social development of rural
communities. The future development of rural
tourism in China would see more government
involvement and actions. Some new policy
directions are addressed here for a good
understanding of China’s rural tourism
development in the near future.
Further stressing rural tourism in
a strategic level
Rural tourism development has helped activate
the rural economy in China. The inflows of
tourists connect rural communities to well
developed cities and thus accelerate the
development pace of rural economy. Rural
tourism is a revolutionary tool to harness the
rural resources. It serves to enhance the
sustainability of rural development in China
by increasing farmers’ income, changing the
rural environment and reorganising the rural
Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 439–450 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/jtr
Rural Tourism Development in China
industry structure. China’s rural tourism
provides leisure and tourism products to the
mass market, and thus has a huge market
potential. It can also affect the transition of
China’s mass tourism from a sightseeing
oriented market to a leisure-and-holiday
oriented one. In this regard, rural tourism
deserves more strategic thinking among the
policy-makers and supportive policies.
Co-ordination and commitment from
multiple government agencies
On 20 March 2007, the CNTA and the MoA
signed an agreement to jointly promote rural
tourism development in the country. Following
the agreement, the National Rural Tourism
Work Leading Team was set up with offices in
the Coordination Department of the CNTA
and the Development and Planning Department
of the MoA. The leading team is responsible
for policy-making, criteria formulation and
policy implementation regarding rural tourism.
The formation of the leading team changed the
previous administrative situation that rural
tourism is only under the jurisdiction of
tourism authorities. The commitment made by
the MoA could expedite the development of
rural tourism in the future.
Joint work agenda by the CNTA and
the MoA
The agreement between the CNTA and the
MoA also states the two ministerial bodies’
joint work agenda. First, the CNTA and the
MoA should work together to study the current
situation of rural tourism and jointly report the
findings with recommendations to the State
Council. Second, they should formulate
regulations, policies and administrative
measures in supporting and facilitating the
development of rural tourism, and attempt to
publicise some important regulations in the
name of the State Council and other policy
documents with other relevant ministries to
increase the implementation power. Third, the
CNTA and the MoA should formulate rural
tourism criteria at county, township and village
levels to regulate rural tourism development
through a standardisation procedure. Fourth,
the two government bodies should work
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
447
together to solve restrictive problems and
foster a better environment for the development
of rural tourism.
Framework of the National Rural Tourism
Evaluation Criteria
The formulation of the National Rural Tourism
Evaluation Criteria (briefly as the criteria)
started in July 2007 (CNTA, 2007c). The first
draft has been completed and public
consultation is under way. According to the
conceptualisation of the criteria, counties,
townships and villages that take rural tourism
as one of their development themes can apply
for an authorised assessment that may lead to
them being granted the title of ‘Rural Tourism
County/Township/Village in China’. The title
can be used for branding, positioning,
destination image-building and other market-
ing purposes. The proposed rural tourism
evaluation system would not follow a
government-dominated work procedure.
Instead, it will be a technical evaluation system
that will be implemented by professionally
accreditation commissions at the national,
provincial and city levels. The accreditation
process will involve a visitor survey, and
preliminary results will be publicised nationally
and open for public feedback and monitoring.
On the other hand, the accreditation is not a
once-in-a-lifetime honour. Applicants should
continue their efforts to meet all the requirements
set in the criteria lest their title be revoked after
re-evaluation.
EVALUATION
If we look into China’s rural tourism
development and policy practices using
Sharpley and Roberts’s (2004) three themes as
a theoretical framework, we would find some
features with Chinese characteristics. First of
all, while experiencing rurality is assumed to
be the principal motivation to drive visitors
to the countryside, neither government nor
business operators fully realise the importance
of maintaining rurality to the sustainability of
rural tourism in China. Generally speaking,
the Chinese government tends to value
economic growth by developing rural tourism.
In poverty-stricken areas where essential
Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 439–450 (2009)
DOI: 10.1002/jtr
448
resources for developing rural tourism exist,
both the government and local communities
are keen to develop rural tourism since PAT
has proved to be an effective means to get
them out of poverty. As the primary goal of
developing tourism is to economically benefit
the local residents, once the local community
have become richer, they would naturally
improve their quality of living by building
new houses, roads and other facilities that look
more urbanised. Actually, one of China’s
modernisation policies is to urbanise most of
its rural areas. If this continues to be the
government’s future policy, the dilemma of
developing rural tourism is obvious. The
dilemma can be best expressed in a Chinese
idiom: to kill the hen for the egg. While rurality
is essential to developing rural tourism, all the
development practices in China’s rural tourism
seem to eliminate rurality.
Consequently, China’s practices and policies
tend to stress rural tourism as ‘an agent of
rural development’ rather than as ‘sustainable
activity’. It is understandable that as a
developing country, China has regarded
tourism mainly as a development tool to
further spur its economy. Other developing
countries would probably take the same stand.
Briedenhann and Wichens (2004) studied rural
tourism in the context of South Africa’s social,
political and economic transition. They noted
that the rural tourism development pattern in
South Africa is different from that experienced
in former central and eastern European
countries in the 1990s. The tourism industry in
South Africa has also been seen as a central
support for the economic reconstruction and
development of the nation.
Although both social and ecological/
environmental benefits are stated as evaluation
criteria in the National Standards on the Evaluation
of Industrial and Rural Tourism Examples (Trial
Version), the sustainability issue has attracted
less attention from government and business
practitioners than academics. While published
articles can be found elaborating on sustainable
rural tourism and the social and economic
impact of developing rural tourism (e.g. Du
and Xiang, 1999; Hu, 2008; Zhao 2008), in
practice, the sustainable features of developing
rural tourism are still overlooked. However,
most of the problems occurring in the
Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
S. Gao et al.
development process are mainly related to the
sustainability of rural tourism. Theoretically,
we can understand rural tourism in the three
themes identified by Sharpley and Roberts
(2004). However, the case of China reveals that
these themes are closely related to each other;
special features in one theme would help
explain phenomena in another. Another lesson
we learn is that we need to construe China’s
rural tourism within a much broader context
of China’s political, social and economic
systems.
CONCLUSIONS
The discussion of rural tourism development
in China cannot be separated from the context
of China as a country with a dominant rural
population and a socialist political system
plus an emerging market economy. Rural
development is a major issue in China. Tourism
can be an effective means of spurring and
promoting rural development in China.
Recognising the importance of rural tourism
in transforming rural economy and the
development of rural society, the Chinese
government has played a decisive role in rural
tourism development. A relatively strong
government involvement is a salient feature of
rural tourism in China. In addition to its
economic function to revive or make the rural
economy boom, rural tourism is also highly
regarded by the Chinese government for its
derived social and environmental functions. In
the beginning of rural tourism development,
rural tourism was integrated into the national
project of poverty alleviation. Recently, rural
tourism has been viewed as a tool to facilitate
social harmony and help construct the new
socialist rural communities. Moreover, the
function of rural tourism as a measure to
preserve ethnic cultures has also been
fully acknowledged by the government.
Environmental sensitivity in rural areas raises
the issue of environmental protection in
developing rural tourism. Rural tourism has
increased farmers’ awareness of the importance
of environment and environmental protection
to the sustainability of rural economy. However,
the current practices should be warned against
pulling rural tourism away from rurality and
Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 439–450 (2009)
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Rural Tourism Development in China
over-exploiting it as a development tool at the
cost of sacrificing its sustainable nature.
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