ABSTRACT
Tourism in China has undergone a rapid and prosperous development since the adoption of the open door policy and economic reform in 1978. By 2000, international tourism earned US$14.1 billion of foreign exchange, a fifty-three-fold increase from US$262.9 million in 1978 (CNTA, 2001). By 2000, China had 7,035 hotels, 7,236 travel agencies, and tourism directly employed 1.9 million people (CNTA, 2001). The rapid growth of tourism in China should be credited primarily to the government tourism policies, given China’s long history with the planned economy, immature tourism business, and small private sector. The aim of this chapter is to examine tourism policy implementation in Chinese tourism enterprises.
