State-directed tourism urbanisation in China's Hengqin

This paper examines an intense form of tourism urbanisation that is produced by the dual operations of strong Chinese-style socialist instructions and ambitious capitalistic experimentations. Drawing on a decade-long recurring ethnography at Hengqin, this study traces state-directed discourses and how these have been discursively, practically performed, and negotiated. Specifically, we found Hengqin's massive tourism development was intended to create an urban tourism destination for a state-directed purpose -the integration of Macao and Hong Kong with mainland China. However, state-directed processes are seldom uncritically consumed and performed by planners, stakeholders, and residents. This paper furthers understandings of tourism urbanisation in terms of state-directedness, everyday negotiations, and sheds light on the contributions of tourism studies to the understandings of urban processes.