BOOK REVIEWS

Gang Xu: Tourism and Local Economic Development in China: Case Studies of Guilin, Suzhou and Beidaihe

The study of tourism, through a range of choices, styles, tastes and motivations, provides a comprehensive insight into social relations, consumerism, class structure, self-identification and cultural symbolism etc. In order to explain why people want to travel and what travellers are looking for, some scholars stress that tourism is a modern invention through which tourists are able to fulfil their imagination by an experience in “substantial and unchanged” pre-modern societies. This argument might be true in some cross-territories as well as international tourism in some developing countries to which some tourists go to see the “exotic”, “primitive” and oriental. However, for domestic tourism, we need to pay more attention to the positive factors, how tourists are mobilised and why people are interested in moving around in their own country. It is therefore also important to pay attention to how tourism affects the local economy and in what terms. A key feature of Gang Xu’s book about the tourism boom in China is the many important insights into the enormous post-reform changes in both international and domestic tourism and the impact that they have had on the local economy during the last two decades.

Tourism and Local Economic Development in China is one of the products of a research project entitled The Impact of Tourism on Socio-economic Change and Regional Development in the People’s Republic of China, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation in Germany. It explores new and important developmental issues and sheds light on the impact of the tourism industry in China on the local economy during the last two decades. The results and findings given in this book from the comprehensive field studies and time-consuming data processing conducted to produce them are worthy of attention.

The book is divided into five main sections. Section I explains the project’s theoretical approaches, what aspects were considered, and how the empirical data used was collected and analysed. In particular, the author announces the use of comparison which shows a contrast between international and domestic tourism in three out of a total of seven “key tourists cities” in China today. These are Guilin in the south, Suzhou in central China, and Beidaihe in the north, each having different characters in terms of history, cultural traditions, transportation, types of investment and development. Section II is related to the growth and structure of tourist demand. The author provides a brief but intensive sketch on two levels of China’s social change after the implementation of the open-door policy in 1978. On the one hand, it shows the growth of international tourism without neglecting the differences between foreigners, compatriots and overseas Chinese; on the other, it looks at the emerging domestic tourism boom and its impact on the above three cities. Section III continues the contrast between international and domestic tourism, but with an emphasis upon the development of a tourism infrastructure. It describes the different policy treatments between joint-venture and state-owned hotels, and how the outcome of the state policy relating to tourism differed from the outcome expected; this section also investigates the negative effects caused by over-investment in the international hotel sector. Changes in the domestic accommodation sector starting from the mid-1980s, local hotels, danwei guest houses, inns and danwei holiday quarters are well elaborated here.

Section IV focuses its discussion on the economic effects on both international and domestic tourism. More importantly, the author does not just offer the reader a detailed comparison, but pinpoints and analyses several specific and significant issues related to the development of tourism in China. Based on the cases discussed in the earlier sections, this section highlights the embedded socio-economic issues that are reflected in foreign exchange receipts and domestic tourism revenues, in addition to the social dynamics in tourism and how it affects rural-urban migration and labour mobility. In the final section, the author concludes by considering the prospects and policy issues in the future of tourism in China.

Until now, only a limited number of tourism studies on China have been published. These have generally focused on issues such as the socio-cultural dynamics of power relations, tourism policy, ethnicity and local development, and modernisation. However, more interdisciplinary works on localisation, globalisation and transnationalism spawned by the emergence of a pan-Asian tourism boom in the coming decades will be expected. Furthermore, with the great advances made in transportation and mass communications, to consider only three or seven “key tourist sites” in mainland China as representative units of the whole of China is increasingly unfeasible; far more data needs therefore to be collected. Besides issues relating to environmental pressures from demands for sustainable development and measures to prevent and curb pollution, we also expect to know more about the people, such as hosts and guests—and their views—involved in tourism. As an anthropologist, I naturally tend to seek a thicker description of the social changes occuring, especially from the different perspectives of people who are involved in the progress. Regarding the issues covered in this book, I would like to see further questions asked in relation to equal opportunities in the industry for men and women alike, demonstration effects in socialisation, adaptation of the industry to the elderly, and influences of the industry on indigenous communities and their traditions, etc.

Overall, this is a well-written book about China’s three most popular tourism destinations; and the changes that they have undergone since the reforms. The majority of the data is well presented and gives a comprehensive illustration of the various impacts of both international and domestic tourism at the local economy level in Guilin, Suzhou and Beidaihe. Research on tourism with regard to local economic development in mainland China is attracting more attention within academic circles than ever before. This book offers valuable insights into the local communities that have been affected by China’s open-door policy since 1978 and is a welcome addition to tourism studies of contemporary China.