RESEARCH ARTICLE
Elite circulation in Chinese ethnic tourism

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.103030Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Ethnic tourism elites evolve to retain power with increasing tourism development.

  • Elite access to multiple fields appears important for retaining rural power.

  • Greater elite mobility (vertical and horizontal) marginalizes ordinary residents.

  • A new framework helps conceptualize elite circulation in Chinese ethnic tourism.

  • Elites deter ethnic tourism governance and poverty alleviation goals.

Abstract

Chinese ethnic tourism has grown rapidly alongside national goals to eradicate poverty by 2020, but not without concern. This study analyzes the rise and evolution of ethnic tourism elites (n = 29) in three minority villages of southwest China. Linking Elite Circulation Theory to ethnographic work in the region since 2013, findings highlight a differentiable conversion of ethnic tourism and other resources fueling 1) individuals' rise to power, and 2) shifts characterizing elite positioning across political, traditional, economic, and educational fields. The study proposes a framework for understanding elite-led tourism, conceptualizing elite circulation in rural China according to evolving attributes of elite groups competing for increased rights and capital within ethnic tourism systems.

Introduction

Since the 1980s, many rural areas in China have been “hollowed”, or emptied, through mass migration of Han peoples (China's ethnic majority) into urban areas (Liu, Fan, & Liu, 2019). Meanwhile, rural areas dominated by ethnic minorities have maintained largely intact populations and social structures while becoming the focus of state-led development projects.

Such projects in rural China increasingly look to tourism as a tool for poverty eradication, particularly in southwest China where many non-Han minorities reside. This region – described as ethnically diverse, ecologically vulnerable, economically undeveloped, autonomously governed, and culturally fragile (Li, 2018; Oakes, 1992) – has seen the Chinese government in recent decades implement myriad ethnic and pro-poor tourism development projects to encourage economic growth (Donaldson, 2007; Yang, 2006, Yang, 2011; Yang & Wall, 2009).

Overlapping in some ways with community-based tourism (CBT), both ethnic and pro-poor tourism emphasize an egalitarian distribution of economic benefits alongside cooperation with key stakeholders to enhance local participation in destination development (Gascón, 2015; Tosun & Timothy, 2003; Zapata, Hall, Lindo, & Vanderschaeghe, 2011). Such practices can increase socio-economic mobility of community residents through livelihood diversification, supporting ethnic village interests to transform from agriculture-dependent communities into modernized agritourism destinations.

However, in the process of tourism-based development, many ethnic communities in southwest China have seen vast reforms in their socio-political structures, with capital-intensive and elite-directed tourism reshaping local social and cultural patterns (Feng, 2017). Among ethnic communities of Guizhou Province (the focus of the current study), state-led promotion of ethnic tourism as a rural development tool has reshaped relations of power. Such changes have generated new and rapidly evolving ethnic tourism elites whose increased mobility and ongoing transformation remain little understood, despite recent attention in the ethnic tourism literature (Huang, 2019; Huang & Sun, 2017; Lor, Kwa, & Donaldson, 2019).

Notably, research suggests that ethnic tourism elites may in fact disempower some community residents through forms of coercion (Graburn, 2018; Knight, 2018; Knight & Cottrell, 2016). These actions can exacerbate existing threats to already vulnerable groups (Montefrio & Sin, 2019; Park, Phandanouvong, & Kim, 2017; Tosun, 2006) while disproportionally and at times exclusively increasing benefits for a select few. In the process, relations of power blend, break and reform to varying degrees as rural, ethnic elites position themselves to gain from regional shifts toward more modern – including tourism-dependent – socio-political systems (Feng, 2017; Li, Yu, Chen, Hu, & Cui, 2016).

While research has linked relations of power to poverty alleviation among rural and ethnic tourism communities (Han, Wu, Huang, & Yang, 2014; Knight & Cottrell, 2016; Park et al., 2017; Scheyvens, 2002; Tosun, 2006), further study is needed on the relationship between recent changes in Chinese development policies and pro-poor/ethnic tourism outcomes among China's rural community residents. To be sure, after lifting some 700 million people out of poverty in the last 40 years, China's government considers tourism-centered policies crucial to national goals for completely eradicating poverty by 2020 (defined as living on less than 1.90 USD per day; Gupta, 2019).

Particularly salient to this paper, despite recent explosive growth in domestic visitation to rural China (Li, Zhang, Zhang, & Abrahams, 2019), few studies have analyzed tourism elites' rise to power in rural China nor how such elites evolve to maintain and diversify ethnic tourism resources and influence. Broader questions remain, as well, about ways that increased elitism in ethnic tourism communities may in fact deter tourism governance and poverty alleviation goals as crucial elements of current development practices in southwest China.

Consequently, the purpose of this study is to conceptualize subtleties in the relations and transference of power characterizing ethnic tourism elites in southwest China. The study uses Elite Circulation Theory (ECT) to qualitatively analyze these subtleties in three villages in Guizhou Province at different stages of ethnic tourism development. It addresses three primary research questions:

  • 1.

    What processes characterize ethnic tourism elites' rise to power in Guizhou Province?

  • 2.

    How do ethnic tourism elites transform to maintain and diversify power in rural China?

  • 3.

    How does elitism in Guizhou ethnic tourism affect state-led tourism governance and poverty alleviation outcomes?

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. It begins with a review of the literature on elite mobility (including ECT), elite-tourism dynamics, and Chinese ethnic tourism. The methodology and three study sites are then described before presenting results from the analysis, organized in terms of growth and change in elite power linked to ethnic tourism systems. The paper closes with a discussion of findings including implications for understanding and optimizing ethnic tourism development in rural Guizhou and elsewhere in China.

Section snippets

Elites, mobility and power

Researchers have traditionally considered elites as the ruling class with more extensive control over, or access to, resources (Khan, 2012; Weber, 1992). Gaining and redefining their power within complex and dynamic “power networks” (Pakulski, 2017, p.13), elites were initially and somewhat simplistically described as those few individuals running social and political systems through subjugation and rule of an unorganized majority (Mosca, 1939).

Over time, research on elitism has become more

Methodology

Data for this study come from long-term field research from 2013 to 2018 in the same three communities. Qualitative research methods included semi-structured interviews (n = 66), in-depth interviews (n = 29) and participant observation, all of which enhance understanding of the phenomenon under consideration, the stakeholders, and the driving forces involved. Field work was originally carried out from 2013 to 2016 by a research team comprised of two faculty and two graduate students (all from

The rise to power: vertical mobility

In order to diversify their livelihoods, tourism pioneers in each community initially and actively participated in ethnic tourism development by providing basic services (food and lodging) to visitors. Early on, tourism activity was primarily viewed as a means for increasing income, given the low barriers to participation as described by one respondent from Huanggang:

We run a BBQ booth in front of my house, hoping to make money by providing food for tourists during the Festival. I could not

Discussion

This study aims to conceptualize subtleties in the relations and transference of power characterizing ethnic tourism elites in southwest China. In addressing the first two research questions, findings uncover processes of elite circulation in terms of elites' rise to positions of influence and subsequent shifts in power across diverse elite fields.

The first research question concerns vertical mobility. In particular, the emergence of tourism pioneers constituted an elementary configuration of

Conclusions

Drawing on elite theory in ethnic tourism studies, this paper analyzes elite mobility in three rural communities of southwest China. Findings highlight vertical mobility as a differentiable conversion (or exploitation) of ethnic tourism and other resources fueling individuals' rise into elite positions of influence at the community level. Additionally, findings draw attention to shifts in power characterizing horizontal mobility along a spectrum of elite categories (political, traditional,

Statements of contribution

  • 1.

    What is the contribution to knowledge, theory, policy or practice offered by the paper?

Studies analyzing the tourism-power nexus in rural China have yet to clarify and conceptualize a process that we argue is foundational to understanding elitism in Chinese ethnic tourism: elite circulation. Addressing this gap, the study proposes a framework that orients theorization of community elites' rise to power (i.e., vertical mobility) and their subsequent shifts for position within ethnic tourism

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41601127) and Ethnic Studies Program of State Ethnic Affairs Commission (Grant No. 2019-GME-045). The Special Fund Project for the Central Universities (Grant No. CCNU19TD001).

Yajuan Li, Associate Professor in Tourism Management at Central China Normal University in the city of Wuhan. She earned her Ph.D. from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Science, and is specifically interested in ethnic tourism and livelihood research in southwest China.

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  • Yajuan Li, Associate Professor in Tourism Management at Central China Normal University in the city of Wuhan. She earned her Ph.D. from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Science, and is specifically interested in ethnic tourism and livelihood research in southwest China.

    David W. Knight, is Assistant Professor and Center for Collaborative Conservation Fellow at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, USA. His tourism research and consulting efforts emphasize local interests, strategic tourism governance and rural-indigenous empowerment in destinations around the world.

    Wenting Luo, a graduate student in Tourism Management at Central China Normal University. Her research interests include the fields of ethnic tourism and tourism space structure.

    Jing Hu, is Professor of Tourism Management at Central China Normal University. She is the Dean of the Wuhan Branch of the China Tourism Academy and sits on the Advisory Board for University Education in Tourism Management under the Ministry of Education, China.

    1

    Postal Address: Building 10, Central China Normal University, NO.152 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, Hubei 430079, China.

    2

    Postal Address: Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA.

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