The Governance of Nature‐Based Tourism in China: Issues and Research Perspectives

The design and establishment of an appropriate governance system for protected areas has been a major concern of national tourism authorities when countries are facing political/administrative reforms, financial challenges, and sociocultural changes. This article presents a critique of the governance discourse; on the basis of a review of new public management research and practice, an analytical framework is proposed for the scrutiny of governance of nature‐based tourism in the current social, economic, and political contexts of China. Private sector involvement is discussed at length in the development of nature‐based tourism in protected areas of China; the study also addresses issues pertaining to public ownership of land, transfers of managerial rights, and public–private partnerships and their corresponding supervision mechanism, with an intent to elucidate innovative governance approaches to the planning and management of nature‐based tourism in protected areas of this socialist regime. 国家旅游局一向十分重视自然保护区治理制度的制定和设计，尤其是适逢国家面对政治/行政改革、财政困难或社会文化变迁。本文对自然旅游治理的论述作出批评，并在评述新公共管理研究及实践的基础上建立分析框架。这一框架详细审查现时中国社会、经济和政治环境下自然旅游治理的现状。本文接着详细讨论私营企业在发展中国自然保护区自然旅游的参与，并试图解决与土地公有制、管理权转移、公共部门与私人企业合作模式及其相应的监督机制相关的问题，用意在于阐明规划和管理中国自然保护区自然旅游的创新治理方法。