Dara Osher

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Hicks, Barbara

Keywords

Ethnic Tourism, Ethnic Minorities, Xinjiang, Guangxi, Uighurs, Zhuang, Ethnic Identity, Integration

Area of Concentration

International and Area Studies

Abstract

Since China's embrace of a market economy and rapid economic development along the eastern coastline, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has realized the opportunity in promoting a tourism market within the more impoverished Western interior. Greater wealth and leisure time for domestic citizens, coupled with increased international access to China, has resulted in a boom in the tourism industry. The CCP seeks to legitimate its rule via a new national identity that would include the majority Han Chinese and the country's 55 officially recognized ethnic minority groups. A burgeoning tourism market, subsidized partially by the government, allows for these shaoshu minzu to make money by marketing and commoditizing their culture to tourists. In the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Guangxi, the integration of the Uighurs and Zhuang, respectively, into the new market economy gives the central government greater access to and control over these peripheral regions. Ethnic tourism, which permits the cultural exchange between local hosts and tourists seeking the exotic 'Other,' leads to further integration of minorities into the Chinese state and the loss of certain ethnic traditions, but the potential for maintaining cultural practices and identity still exists.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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