Structured inter-network collaboration: Public participation in tourism planning in Southern China

Public participation is considered a cornerstone of sustainable tourism planning. Although this process is well established and tested in western democracies, there is an emerging trend of developing it within the liberalizing Chinese tourism economy. Using a qualitative research strategy, this paper applies the theoretical construction of community participation in tourism planning to the analysis of the planning process of a tourism destination in Jiao Chang Wei, Shenzhen, China. The paper finds that: 1) public participation has played a significant role in the formulation and implementation of the tourism destination plan in the case study area. 2) Structuralized inter-network collaboration led-by government organized non-governmental organizations has the potential to become dominant paradigm of public participation in tourism planning in China in the future. The paper concludes with the contributions of this research to wider theory.