Leisure travel to rural areas promoted as part of vitalization work

Operators of tourism businesses in the countryside will reap huge benefits as the central government steps up efforts to push forward rural vitalization work.

Late last month, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, China's Cabinet, jointly released a guideline focused on rural vitalization. It clarifies the need to improve leisure tourism in the countryside and encourages villagers to open or operate homestays.

Qualified leisure tourism programs will be used to popularize science and knowledge among primary and high school student tourists, and they will have the chance to take part in farming activities.

Fu Yonglin, a member of the 13th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, said in a recent interview with China Tourism News that rural vitalization is a major task, so developing tourism in the countryside won't be easy.

Fu said it's important to turn the development of byproducts from manufacturing, rural tourism and e-commerce into integrated components of the vitalization effort.

"Take Sichuan as an example," he said. "The western part of the province is rich in bamboo. Villagers not only use it to make products that can be sold online, but have also developed cultural programs to invite tourists to weave bamboo and create products themselves."

He added that the guideline also proposed the establishment of industrial clusters to make it more practical to build homestays in rural areas.

Zhu Shengxuan, founder and president of the Xband Tourism Group, which concentrates on rural homestay development, said some areas had trouble in the past with such businesses due to poor management, a talent shortage and inadequate infrastructure, which lead to low returns on investments.

He said that it's necessary to take a collective view of rural vitalization rather than splitting the industries involved in the work into independent parts.

"Rural areas should be planned as a whole, to make it easier to solve problems like education and healthcare," he added.

With rural tourism growing to be one of the pillar industries supporting vitalization work, many other members of the 13th CPPCC National Committee also offered suggestions during a recent gathering to promote better development of the sector.

Liu Muhua, vice-president of Jiangxi Agricultural University and a member of the CPPCC National Committee, said that it's necessary to use the existing assets of villages, such as land and houses, to support rural tourism.

He suggested that the government make every effort to develop rural tourism and leisure agriculture to lend sustainable support to the vitalization of the countryside.