ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the specific nature of tourism gentrification in China. It aims at exploring the different features of tourism gentrification in the context of China's rapid urbanisation. Since first developed by Smith, the rent-gap theory has attracted considerable attention in the literature on gentrification and continues to be discussed and criticised today. Tourism gentrification in China shares features of super-gentrification and 'new-build' gentrification but it also renews historical areas and may rise from brownfield areas. According to the classical rent-gap theory gentrification involves reinvestment in inner cities after an initial phase of suburbanisation. Nowadays, China celebrates its thriving neo-liberal urbanism and has engaged in globalisation. Before 1978 the land now occupied by Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Towns (OCTs) housed a traditional farming community, comprising five villages, 418 households and 1,986 people. Most of these residents were peasants and a few were returning Chinese from Southeast Asia.
