COMMUNITY RESURGENCE: EXPLORING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TOURISM IN UPLIFTING RURAL AREAS FOR CHINA'S POVERTY ALLEVIATION

Abstract

The global pursuit of poverty eradication remains a paramount concern, with the United Nations setting ambitious targets in 2000 to halve the numbers of the extremely impoverished and hungry by 2015. The tourism industry, characterized by labor intensity, geographic dispersion across impoverished regions, strong industrial connections, and low entry barriers, emerges as a potential catalyst for poverty alleviation. The concept of pro-poor tourism, initially proposed by the British International Development Bureau in 1999, specifically targets poverty reduction through tourism-related initiatives. Diverse pro-poor tourism programs, such as the World Tourism Organization's Sustainable Tourism–Eliminating Poverty Initiative (ST-EP program), have since surfaced, garnering attention from academia and government institutions alike.

The theoretical framework that underpins the relationship between tourism and poverty alleviation has traversed four distinct phases: liberalism/neo-liberalism, criticism, alternative development, and post-structuralism. The prevailing viewpoint asserts that tourism can be a potent instrument for poverty reduction in developing nations, as emphasized by Scheyvens (2008). Nevertheless, the academic discourse remains nuanced, with reservations regarding the impact of tourism on poverty. Some scholars argue that while tourism stimulates economic growth, it may do so at the expense of environmental sustainability, as posited by Woodward et al. (2016). Additionally, concerns persist that tourism income predominantly benefits foreign investors, leading to revenue leakage that fails to reach the impoverished segments of the population, as noted by Gascón (2015). These complexities suggest a multifaceted relationship between tourism and poverty.

While foreign research has extensively explored the effects of tourism on poverty alleviation, particularly in theoretical contexts, the majority of studies on this subject in China have remained qualitative in nature. Consequently, there exists a gap in the Chinese literature with respect to systematic, quantitative, and standardized research in this domain (Li et al., 2009).