The Ethical Issues And Coping Strategies In China Tourism Development Activities

As a rising industry in 21 st century, not only does the tourism facilitate the growth of economy, but it increases the Gross Domestic Product(GDP), which creating much more job opportunities for the communities. Meanwhile, it promotes the culture exchanges among different countries and regions. In the light of the economic boosts, innovation of the transportation, and the development of the living standard, an increasing number of people has been involving into the tourism. Thanks to the sharply increase economy after the Reform and Open Policy carried out, such industry has stepped into an unprecedented prosperity, even though the business of tourism in our country doesn’t have a long history. In 2015, the number of traveling passengers reaches to 4 billion, and it generates over 4 trillion RMB revenues annually, which enables China to one of the largest tourism countries in the world.Whether the Tourism is able to keep on going healthily and fast highly depends on the Tourism Development, because the Tourism Development is the starting point and core stage of the whole process of the tourism developing. A series of ethically issues have been triggered during the progress of the industry expanding, due to the dated method and theory of exploitation, which means some of the regions still remain on the stage of “exploitation with any protections”. Therefore, these issues will be discussed through different stakeholders’ points of view under employing the ethic theories and the approaches of environmental ethics. Furthermore, the probe will be down to the root of the reasons causing such phenomenon. The goal of this study is to find the most appropriate ethical method of developing the industry of tourism in China.Four parts are separated to be discussed:The first part fully describes the Tourism Development in China. The concept and details of the Tourism Development is provided from the comparison of differences between the exploitation of tourism resources and the Tourism Development, because the resources of tourism is the backbone of Tourism Development. And then, different stakeholders’ benefits are specifically analyzed inthe process of developing the tourism. The whole process of it is integrity, dynamic,different social areas related, and influencing the benefits of the society, economy and environment. In the fact, the developing is occupied with fighting and compromising among related beneficial parties. Therefore, the cooperation among each sections and parties will accomplish the development of tourism successfully and integrity. In another word, recognizing every parties’ interests and needs seems to be the crucial key to get the goal. There are list of topics that will be discussed through, such as Tourism Developers, Tourism Organizers, tourists, local residents, and Tourism Resources. Meanwhile, the meaning of developing the tourism is laid. Looking back to the history of China and other countries’ tourism development and taking other countries’ good experience into our consideration, we can summarize the issues and shortages in China.The second part unfolds the ethical issues in the Tourism development. These issues are argued from 4 aspects, the Tourism developers, the organizers, tourists, and local residents. These issues includes disordered and over exploitation, which causes damage to resources. The reasons causing these issues(for instance why the resources have been wasted; tremendous negative impact to the nature and society; the value and the moral standard of the local residents have been distorted; and the changes of living) are because the disorganized of the organizers, the increasing number of the tourists, and a big range of their personal quality. All catalyzes the social issues.Thirdly, depending on above issues mentioned, the reasons caused them in the process of Tourism Development will be analyzed. And these reasons are analyzed from 4 stakeholders’ angles, developers, organizers, tourists, and local residents. For example, the developers exploit the resources exceeding the boundary of the environmental capability regardless of the balance of different stakeholders’ interests;organizers neglect the governance, rush to the profits, and are lack of the sense of social responsibility and the sense of social morality; tourists need to improve themselves quality and acknowledge the environmental protection knowledge; the local residents don’t have the right value standard and the enough ability of involvinginto the protective actions.The last part demonstrates the approach of developing tourism ethically. Given the causing reason of issues generated from the development, this study further presents how to exploit the eco-tourism by ethical model and implement the low-carbon development. It includes two main aspects: one is the ethical theories need to be applied into the development, including the principle of human and nature in harmony, the principle of balanced interests and principles of sustainable development, cultural protection principles; two is the ethical approach of development, for instance, the quality of the developers’ themselves, how to perfect the insiders’ rule in such industry, correct leading the tourists, and enhancing the local residents’ living conditions, etc.The Tourism Development is not only related to the eco-system issues, but impacts the social living standard somehow. How to meet the ethical requirements in the development process and implement the eco-development and low-carbon development will be the main study trend in the near future in tourism industry.