Rethinking culture-led urban regeneration: The role of culture and tourism in urban renewal under China’s state entrepreneurialism

This paper re-examines the role of culture and tourism in urban regeneration, arguing that the dominant Western-centric framework of urban entrepreneurialism is insufficient to explain contemporary practices in China. Under China’s model of state entrepreneurialism and the national strategy of culture-tourism integration, culture and tourism in the micro-regeneration of historic districts have evolved beyond their conventional role as economic instruments and increasingly function as a dual-purpose state mechanism. Drawing on the cases of Yongqingfang in Guangzhou and the Small Park Historic District in Shantou, the paper shows how culture and tourism serve both as a strategic vehicle for advancing national-cultural mandates such as ‘cultural confidence’ and as an ideological and governance resource for legitimizing state intervention in urban space, property relations, and local social life. The paper concludes that culture-tourism integration in China should be understood not only as a development strategy but also as a mode of spatial governance and historical narration.