TITLE:
Rural Tourism and New Township Development: A Study of Jiuzhou, Guizhou Province, China
AUTHORS:
Lei Wu, Tai-Chee Wong
KEYWORDS:
Jiuzhou Township, Rural Urbanization, Peasants, Tourism, Income Levels, Market
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.5 No.4,
November
27,
2017
ABSTRACT:
Peasantry is symbolic of China’s rural poverty, especially in mountainous
provinces such as Guizhou. Recent public campaigns in China to modernize
rural regions have much focused on organizing peasants to be urbanized, and
engaged in higher value services, one of which is tourism. The paper has used
Jiuzhou, a small township in Guizhou to examine its rural urbanization process
through land value enhancement and human resource redeployment of
local workforce. Jiuzhou’s proximity to the famous tourist site, Huangguoshu,
and its easy access to a trans-province highway and its own heritage attractions
have been an enabling power to raise its economic status. The study has
found a close relationship between the urban-based tourism development and
the pace of urbanization, and local tourism development has held back local
residents to some extent from migrating out. Growth has generated greater
demand for goods and services which in turn has stimulated higher levels of
consumption pattern. Nevertheless, many state-run travel agencies were reported
to be more dedicated to “image engineering” than market competition,
and environmental conservation, the key for eco-tourism, has been somehow
overlooked.