Tourism in China

Destinations, Planning and Experiences

Chris Ryan, Songshan (Sam) Huang

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781845414009
• eBook ISBN: 9781845414030
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This book offers an in-depth understanding of tourism development and destination planning in China's transitional economy. It is a unique collaboration between editors and contributors to present issues in current Chinese tourism research to Western colleagues. The influences informing the book range from pragmatic concerns about destination planning in China, to senses of injustice about how that planning generates unequal distributions of revenue via concerns about needs for new conceptual approaches. The book also examines the changing nature of Chinese society and its political system, and commentary on the changing role of the Chinese State in tourism planning. It will be a valuable resource for postgraduate students and tourism researchers as well as for tourism industry professionals who want to understand China as a domestic, outbound and inbound tourism market.

1 The Role of Tourism in China’s Transition: An Introduction

Chris Ryan and Songshan (Sam) Huang

The Annual Development Report of China’s Tourism 2011–2012, published by the China Tourism Academy (effectively the research arm of the China National Tourism Administration), continues a series of statistics that record growth in the numbers of tourists arriving in and leaving China. While domestic tourism growth slowed in 2008, the year of the Beijing Olympics, since that year it has continued to grow by in excess of 10% per annum and today domestic tourism accounts for over two billion tourist movements (CTA, 2012). Domestic tourism itself accounts for 65% of all tourism associated with China and dwarfs the two other components of inbound foreign tourists and outbound Chinese tourists. Outbound tourists now account for about 65 million passenger movements, and the number of inbound tourists is approximately the same number.

Impressive though these numbers are, of necessity they do not tell the complete story of tourism development within China. However, it is clear that Chinese tourism is coming of age, and increasingly China is not only a recipient of foreign investment but is now seeking to invest in tourism overseas. Gu et al. (2012), for example, note the mergers and acquisitions that the Chinese hotel industry is beginning to undertake in the USA. Niche tourism is also emerging and one such example is cruise tourism. Such is the importance of Chinese cruise tourism that the first China Cruise Industry Development Report was published in 2008 and this continues to be published annually by the Municipal Government of Shanghai Hongkou District, the Shanghai International Shipping Institute and the China Cruise and Yacht Industry Association (CCYIA). Spa tourism is another niche that is rapidly growing, while rural tourism continues apace, marked not only by growing numbers of tourists, but also by increasing investment, improved facilities and its own emergent niches such as tea tourism, as identified in Chapter 3 of this book.

Such is the rapidity of change that past research that is descriptive of places and their characteristics becomes part of a historical record and less of a description of the current situation. Does this therefore mean that any book on tourism in China is fated to become redundant almost as soon as it leaves the printing press or in these days becomes accessible on the internet? Different responses can be made to this question. First, the historian would probably argue that one cannot understand the present without being aware of the past – that the past serves as a benchmark from which change can be dated and traced. Second, the process of change itself is not neutral, but serves as a continuing lesson to inform the present and the future, and this is particularly so when researchers move from description into analysis and explanation. Conceptual thinking is thus important, as such thinking seeks to make sense of why and how circumstances have changed, what the causes were and how those factors might inform future policies.

Within China itself there exist several questions as to future directions at social, economic and political levels. Fulin (2010) identifies a meta-narrative of such changes when he states that China faces three ‘terminations’ in its current transitional phase. There will be the end of an export-led model of economic development, and this will be accompanied by the demise of the investment-led and GDP-centred models. The emergent theme will be one of equality and sustainable development. He argues that past policies cannot solve the problems caused by those same policies. They were introduced 30-years earlier to cope with a very different set of problems from those that face China today. In the 1980s the problem was one of finding a means for developing ‘productive forces to a great extent (and) improving the people’s living standards’ (Fulin, 2010: 42). Currently, he argues, reforms are being distorted for reasons of fatigue with economic models and a lack of consensus. Reform today is not a matter of ‘the mere amelioration of systems’ (Fulin, 2010: 44), but rather a comprehensive reform of ‘economic, social and even political systems’ (Fulin, 2010: 45). But his language is a language of transition, not revolution as occurred during Maoist times, and it is a viewpoint shared by many in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party as it advocates the growth of a harmonious society, albeit in scientific ways and with Chinese characteristics, to cite the rhetoric of various Party Congresses. The issue is not one of resisting or promoting change, but of selecting a means that sustains the gains of the last three decades and generates further economic well-being for those millions that remain below the poverty line (some 130 million according to Zeng & Ryan, 2012), while creating a transition that meets the demands of a more affluent population seeking a less polluted environment in which to live, at the same time as recognising individual rights in the context of the mixed private– public economic sector that is emerging. All of this is to be achieved without putting at risk the social ‘glue’ that holds China together, a clue that includes the Chinese culture and heritage that forms such a large part of Chinese tourism. For Fulin (2010) the vision of the second 30-year development can be summarised as one of ‘Consumption, Innovation, Green and Equality’. This requires the emergence of a consumer-led pattern of consumption based on a low carbon economy contextualised in a new theory of public service. Some writers have identified the role of corporate social responsibility as a key concept in this transition in China (e.g. Gu et al., 2013; Zhou et al., 2007).

These changes have a great bearing on the role of tourism within China, and that role has been recognised by tourism being given the status of one of the ‘pillars’ of the Chinese economy in November 2009 by the State Council (Sofield & Li, 2011). On Monday 27 August 2012, with the draft of the Tourism Law having first been audited and discussed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, that status began to be legally implemented with the commencement of reforms relating to operational standards for travel agencies and scenic areas. With reference to the former, the draft law includes clauses stating that tour guide services fees must be clearly listed in travel contracts, and that travel agencies may not charge tourists for any expenses not included in the contracts. It also explicitly includes a clause that prohibits travel agencies from forcing tourists to purchase goods, thereby tackling the increasingly loathed practice of taking tourists to retail outlets selected on the basis of commission paid to tour guides rather than service to tourists (Xinhua, 2012). Such legislation illustrates a move towards greater consumer rights, an easing of inhibitions to future economic development and a social harmonisation with Chinese characteristics, by sustaining the intrusion of the state and its mechanisms into regulation adherence.

The different chapters in this book represent the thoughts of Chinese scholars seeking to understand these issues and are primarily based upon empirical or grounded research. They are for the most part based upon research undertaken by younger Chinese scholars in their doctoral theses, chosen to represent emergent ideas that hitherto have not been available to Western scholars in that they are derived from theses written in Mandarin, although some chapters have emanated from Chinese scholars working in Australia and New Zealand. However, for the most part these chapters are derived from ethnographic-style research which has required that their authors have lived in China for substantial periods of time, and again have been written by scholars with a past history of working in China, primarily in its tourism industry.

The voice articulated in these chapters is therefore different from that of many articles pertinent to Chinese tourism that appear in journals readily available to readers outside China. These were mainly written by Chinese scholars working or studying in universities, primarily in the USA or UK, and whose research may be predicated upon responses to questionnaires. While recognising that such research has the reliability normally measured by statistical tests there remains an issue of cultural understanding; this is particularly evident when dealing with tourism developments in the rural areas of China, as was evidenced by Yang et al. (2012) in their paper on Chinese attitudes towards the completion of questionnaires. One might point out that the attitudes they uncovered, such as the wish to give the response ‘wanted’ by the researcher or that of the ‘official response’, is not unknown in countries other than China. However, given the transitional state of China as it emerges from a top-down policy-directed nation to an as yet ill-defined ‘new China’ as discussed by commentators like Fulin (2010), the potential responses described by Yang et al. (2012) are not uncommon, and the complexities of the situation often only become apparent through a process of immersion in given places and processes. It is this realisation that lends importance to the following chapters. Indeed, Chinese scholars have been critical of some of the research undertaken by those outside their own country who wish to understand China but who depend solely upon questionnaire-based data, while at the same time there is a need and a role for those who seek to bridge the differences (Chen & Bao, 2011). Over time, however, these differences appear – at least to these writers – to be diminishing, for many reasons. First, China is beginning to emulate Western patterns of being a consumer society. Second, the patterns of globalisation bring business practices and a realisation of a global village into an understanding of common interests, whether environmental or social. Hence China’s Green Hotels reforms lean heavily in practice on a need for hotels to benchmark themselves against the best practice of their Western counterparts. For those inclined toward a conspiracy theory of history, the interweaving of governmental and corporate interests also prompts decision makers within their different respective societies towards seeking to sustain the status quo of power relationships, while equally resistance becomes more common when aided by the internet.

Tourism is partly a result and cause of these processes, and these issues are touched upon in various ways by the different contributors to the book. The book is divided into three parts, each with its own introduction. The three parts are ‘Development Experiences’, ‘Policy Implementation and Destination Evolution’ and ‘Planning’. Within each part, chapters illustrate the theme, although by their nature overlaps occur. Indeed the fourth chapter in the book by Bao and Zuo could have found its way into the second, but eventually the editors thought that it possessed greater similarities to the other chapters within this part.

The first part of the book commences with a chapter by Zhou and Jiang and illustrates themes relating to the development of villages as tourist destinations in Chinese mountains. They note that mountain regions represent 69% of the land area of China and that the villages within them have experienced slower economic development than most other parts of China, and thereby represented a target for development under the Eleventh Five-year Plan in 2005, under the slogan of ‘Constructing New Socialist Rural Communities’. The Happy Farmer’s Home (HFH; Nongjiale in Chinese) has been one outcome of these policies, and Zhou and Jiang describe how these came into being, their dependence on external sources of capital and the lack of social capital within the villages. This theme is also apparent in the work of Bao and Zuo, in their chapter entitled ‘Institutional Opportunism in Tourism Investment’. They describe processes only too familiar to many tourism researchers in China. It is not uncommon to find the wish to promote employment and income for a region becoming tied into the wish for corporate profit by private sector organisations still entwined in different ways with the State, especially at provincial and municipal levels, with both seemingly oblivious to the, at least short-term, losses incurred by local residents. Such processes are not always rational, being dominated by narrowly based considerations and vulnerable to corrupt practices.

In the following chapter Li, Wang and Ryan describe a case study that illustrates the themes of the two previous chapters, namely the case of Qiyunshan, a small mountain community not far from Huangshan City in Anhui Province. Based on its Taoist tradition and scenic beauty and subsistence agriculture including the growing of tea, the village has been rapidly developed between 2010 and 2012, with a new road being blasted through the mountain, and external capitalised resort complexes being built at the foot of the mountain on land compulsorily purchased from the local peasantry. Those of working age have lost their means of livelihood and need to seek new sources of income, often through migration, while profits go to the out-of-region developers, although the mountain villagers are now more wealthy than before. Apart from representing the unique Chinese tourism development experience at the village level, the Qiyunshan case as illustrated in this chapter taps into a social issue, more or less common as observers can see from China’s general development realities and typically in the recent Wukan incident, which casts a gloomy future for those villagers who have lost their land as an essential means of living, out of all the optimism and short-sighted zeal from both the government and communities.

The last two chapters in Chapter 1 differ. Chapter 6 by Yong (Joe) Zhou describes the use of festival and special event tourism in China and illustrates frailties in the planning process because major events are often dictated by a wish to make ‘the grand statement’ and compete with other centres, but often are associated with a lack of post-event resource planning. The final chapter in this part is also based on ethnographic research by Jingjing Yang. However, instead of adopting conventional detailed descriptions of grounded research, the authors have recourse to the theories of Simmel and Coser in order to examine the nature of tension as not only a destabilising process but one that can be creative in formulating new alliances, group definitions and new modes of action.

Part 2 contains a chapter by Yang and Sun entitled ‘Evolution of Tourism Destination Complex System: Theoretical Foundations’ (Chapter 10) and a second by Yang, ‘Evolution of Tourism Destination Complex System: Cases in China’ (Chapter 11), offering amendments to the Butler (1980) Tourism Area Life Cycle concept by drawing on systems and chaos theories to suggest that tourism planning in China is a complex, organic process wherein different tensions whirl around each other seeking a homeostasis that is at best only temporary. These theoretical processes are preceded by a chapter by Wang and Ap that sets the scene by describing policies put in place to handle tourism flows and numbers in the ancient town of Lijiang in Yunnan Province. They note the disparate authorities responsible for planning and promotion, and how these conflicting processes emasculate the authority of the Lijiang Tourism Bureau, the Lijiang Tourism Industry Association and the Ancient Town District Tourism Bureau, and the Ancient Town Preservation and Management Bureau. Indeed, the number of bodies specifically identified with tourism creates issues of a boundary and regulatory nature. Little wonder, therefore, that tourism administration is identified as a ‘complex system’ by Yang. The remaining two chapters by Huang, Ryan and Yang further analyse the nature of local administration (Chapter 12) and finally the discrepancies in perceptions based on differences between personal and altruistic notions of tourism impacts are examined with reference to the event policies of Hangzhou in a chapter by Zhou and Ryan (Chapter 13).

The final part comprises four chapters. The first by Hu examines the spatial relationships between the core area of a tourist destination and the peripheral regions around it, and the corridors that link the peripheries to the core. Drawing on the Peripheral Environments of Tourist Attraction (PETA) initiated in the Xi’an Manifesto, written by the International Council on Monument and Sites (ICOMOS) in 2005, Hu argues that the concepts have implications beyond those of heritage sites, and can be applied to the administration of tourist destinations and regions. She argues for an integrated form of destination management that requires recognition of the differing functions of these areas and a form of management that is cooperative, coordinating and responsive to the needs of stakeholders.

In Chapter 16 Wong and Ryan look at the impacts of religious tourism at Putuoshan on members of the monastic orders that reside there. One of the major Buddhist sites in the world, Putuoshan is chosen here as a representative site of religious, heritage and cultural tourism that is being promoted by the Chinese state. The chapter makes clear that those who are defined as ‘true believers’ are a minority among the visitors, and the majority are motivated to visit by a wish to see a site representative of China’s classical past or by general sightseeing motives. Increasing numbers have, however, required the introduction of controls requesting the adherence to approved patterns of behaviour. The context of the text is, however, the unspoken notion that such tourism is promoted as a means of securing a sense of being Chinese that draws upon respect for authority by a controlling party that is increasingly moving away from the founding ideals of Maoism.

In Chapter 17 Wen examines the role of iconic sites more generally, but with reference to the Danxiashan Scenic Zone, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 2010 for its natural features. The key attributes that are required for a site to obtain recognition as an ‘iconic’ site are listed, and the relationships between these features and their implications for management are analysed through a series of diagrams. The final chapter by Ai, Song, Ryan and Gu represents a stage in a longitudinal study of Beijing’s Shi Cha Hai hutong that updates past research by the third and fourth authors.

Interspersed between the three parts of the book are introductory chapters by the editors that seek to highlight the similarities and differences between the chapters that make up each part, and do so with reference to research literature relating to China. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, tourism in China has go...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 The Role of Tourism in China’s Transition: An Introduction
• Part 1: Development Experiences
• Part 2: Policy Implementation and Destination Evolution
• Part 3: Planning
• Index