Between Empowerment and Gentrification: A Case Study of Community-Based Tourist Program in Suichang County, China

Abstract

The phenomenon of hollow villages is a long-lasting obstacle to China’s rural development. With this background, this study examines a for-profit community-based tourist program operated at a rural hollow village in Zhejiang, China and explores how this program facilitates meaningful transformations in the community. The theoretical concept of empowerment was introduced to critically understand and analyse the community transformations, and the data was collected through program-related or village-related media content, participant observation, and focus group interviews. Our findings reveal that varied types of empowerment had been gained by the residents via the program, which has strongly demonstrated the positive and meaningful transformations in the community. Lastly, gentrification, a type of community transformation, was a positive change from the program managerial staff’s view, but it could lead to uncertainties and problems of the economic and political disempowerment to the residents in the long term.