A Study On The Ethnic Development Under The Influence Of Tourism In Guizhou Ethnic Areas

Guizhou is a multi-ethnic province with 18 ethnic groups in a land of 170 thousands square kilometers. All of those ethnic groups originated from five grand ethnicities, that is, Huaxia, Baiyue, Miao-Yao, Baipu, Di-Qiang, and now concentrate around 3 ethnic autonomous regions,11 ethnic autonomous counties and 250 towns. Each ethnic group developed its separate distinctive culture in a specific natural and social environment. All of them contribute a lot to development of Guizhou province. Ethnic Guizhou, taking full advantage of natural and ethnic cultural resources, has to some extent achieved its ethnic and regional development by means of tourism industry within more than 30 years since the Opening and Reform. However, with excessive development of tourism, some economic, political, cultural, social and ecological problems are also emerging in this area and within each ethnic group. All of those problems may well be influencing ethnic region’s economic development, social stability and governmental target of all ethnic groups working hard together to achieve growth and prosperity.Ethnic Guizhou is well known with rich natural and cultural resources; but it is being in a "richly-poor" trap for a long time. Its mountainous geography, on the one hand, separates all ethnic groups from each other, and makes them isolated and lagged behind to a great extent. On the other hand, Guizhou was regarded by ancient rulers as an aboriginal place, and most of impressed ethnic groups were compelled to emigrate out. These constrained its ethnic peoples’ cultural and social interactions with outsiders, and detained growth of its productivity, which aggregates difficulty of ethnic development. Due to those historical and social concurrents, ethnic areas in Guizhou are always labeled with poor, rural, ecologically fragile, and under-developing. Its ethnic development is also entangled with issues of agriculture, farmer and rural area, as well as with poverty and ecological problems. And when it comes to economic, political, cultural, social and ecological aspects of ethnic minorities, things will be more complicated. So, ethnic development in Guizhou will certainly encounter severe complexities as tourism industry is taken as a strategy.The importance of tourism to ethnic development is that industry clusters can help reconstruct the industry structure of ethnic areas, and enhance their social productivity. The development of tourism in ethnic Guizhou is related to both tourism and ethnic development. Tourism in Guizhou put more emphasis on regional economic development than on local ethnic development. This leads to disintegration of tourism development with the local realities, and adversely affects quality of indigenous industry and ethnic development. Economy is only a part played in ethnic development which, apart from it, also includes political, cultural, social and ecological issues. All of these are interrelated and co-constraint. Specifically, ethnic economic development is a basis of and constraint by other aspects of ethnic groups. Therefore, ethnic development is a comprehensive coordination process, depending on the coordination of economic aspect with other ones. Currently, tourism industry development at ethnic areas in Guizhou propels local ethnic economic growth while it also weakens local ethnic groups’capacity of development due to its neglects of other aspects. For example, excessive development and poor operation in tourism industry have caused so many problems as enlargement of economic gap, anomie of cultural development, deterioration of ecological environment, lack of guarantee of rights and benefits, and social environment, etc. It proves that economic growth cannot simply solve current regional and ethnic development problems in Guizhou.Guizhou encounters a true reality of poverty and backwardness, and so do its ethnic areas. The State Council’s Some Suggestions on Promoting Well and Quick Development of Guizhou Economy and Society in 2012 writes that a batch of culture industry bases and cultural clusters with regional features are suggested to build by taking advantage of Guizhou’s multi-culture resources, and to put forward ethnic region’s development should be as the key of regional growth so as to speed up development of autonomous regions, counties and towns. Within such a context, it is significant to concern more about ethnic development problems and to find some solutions. Meanwhile, at the stage of fast implementation of the Grand West Area Development strategy, making tourism industry play an active role in regional economic growth is the key to promote local ethnic development in quality and quantity. Therefore, while tourism industry in Guizhou is still to promote economic growth, local ethnic areas should change their tourism development strategies, coordinate relationships of all stakeholders, ensure development rights of local peoples, and speed up adjustment of industry structure. They are also suggested to take tourism industry as a channel to promote interactions of all ethnic groups, enhance local people’s self-development capacity and social productivity, eventually realizing poverty alleviation and catching up other developed areas.