Share Of The Property Interests Of Ethnic Tourism And Cultural Resources

Against the background of the globalized market economy, nowadays transportation and communication are increasingly advanced. When pursuing material comforts, people also increasingly concern about the satisfaction of spiritual life. Thereupon, various forms of tourism such as self-driving travelling, travelling abroad, travelling to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, etc. are emerging one after another, and tourism is advancing and changing rapidly. A variety of new tourist attractions and tourism programs are continually changing to meet the new need, and some areas populated with ethnic minorities that were rarely known by the outside world and were in a semi-closed state in the past are gradually coming into view of the general public. Their unique geological and geomorphologic features and traditional ethnic cultures are revealing themselves more and more before the world. Therefore, ethnic tourism becomes growing vigorously in the country. As the tourism industry can stimulate the, local economic growth and increase the popularity of the place, the tourism industry, especially the ethnic tourism, is made an important economic growth point in many areas. The main stakeholders existing in the ethnic tourism development are:the local government, the tourism developers and the local ethnic minorities. The different stakeholders play different roles and have different interest demands in the ethnic tourism; thus a relationship of mutual support and mutual restriction among them is formed. However, because the local government and the tourism developers have common consideration of economic interests, then often in some cases form the overwhelming interest groups, leaving only the local ethnic minorities passively suffering the losses of both the material interests and the cultural interests. Just as Professor Zhuang Kongshao said:"Almost only in a shrewd investment practice involving commerce and tourism economy in cultural heritage, they can always be seen in the dominating position of the law 'prophet'(as opposed to the relative terms of 'knowing little' and 'knowing nothing'about contract signing for the local minorities) and continuously gaining the priority of dominance of the local cultures, such as the priority of commercialization of the local cultures. This priority, whether when based on the 'protection' of the local cultural heritage, or in view of the so-called 'development', has proved the passivity and helplessness of the regional minorities in the process of cultural transmission; and it is always easy to deprive their own interests of protection."The reasons why ethnic minorities cannot equally share the interests in the ethnic tourism development are:the nature of pursuing "profits maximization" by the developers, the lax enforcement of the government's public accountability, and the lack of non-governmental organizations, etc. In this thesis, from the view of laws, the most important reasons are:the property rights of ethnic cultural resources have been not clearly defined for a long time; the property rights institutional arrangements are not unreasonable; the authority for the stakeholders to the cultural resources is not clearly defined. These reasons lead to the ignorance of the related interests for the local ethnic minorities. Only when it is recognized that the local residents are the owner of the cultural resources and have their ownership and other rights associated with the ownership such as the assignment right, the authorized competency, the earning right, etc., can the local residents establish the dominant position of property rights of their cultural resources, and can they participate in tourism development as an equal legal subjects. Current researches in academia on property rights of ethnic cultural resources advocate using of intellectual property laws, or advocate development of special ethnic cultural protection laws, or advocate improvement of relevant laws and regulations, strengthening the government's responsibilities and building sense of cultural property rights, etc. Yet these opinions lack systematic and in-depth research on ethnic culture property rights system. In fact, the achievement of establishing an ethnic culture property rights system needs the cooperation and coordination among legislation, law enforcement, the judiciary and the corresponding responsibilities of the government. Therefore, in this thesis, ethnic cultural resources property rights are researched from the above aspects, in order to better ensure that the local ethnic minorities can benefit from ethnic tourism development.Innovation of this thesis is:on the basis of an overall summary on the connotation, the nature and the contents of ethnic cultural resources, reconstruct the existing ethnic cultural resources property rights system, and establish a system from public law to private law, from the substantive law to the procedural law, from legislation to law enforcement and the judiciary, so as to achieve a full range of protection of ethnic cultural resources; only thus can the equal beneficial interests for the local ethnic minorities in tourism development be truly protected, the ethnic cultural resources be better protected, and the healthy development of ethnic tourism be ensured.