China's continuing economic reforms since 1978 have substantially altered its economic structure, expanding the service sector, including the tourist industry. The reforms have resulted in spectacular economic growth and a boom in tourism development. But China's economic growth has been very uneven regionally and has been cause for political concern. The ability of tourism to counteract this uneven development and promote regionally decentralised development is therefore of special interest as is the sustainability of regional tourism, which often depends on nature conservation and the presence of minority cultures. This book addresses all those issues. Although focussed on China, it deals with issues such as those involving the sustainability of tourism, and convergence and divergence in regional tourism development and economic growth relevant to other geographical areas.Contents:Tourism, Economic Growth and Sustainable DevelopmentTourism Development and Changing Policies in China: An OverviewRegional Economic Disparity and Tourism Development: Theories and the Chinese CaseSpatial Distribution of Tourism in China: Its Nature, Determinants and ConsequencesTrends in the Regional Distribution of Tourism in China and Their ImplicationsEcotourism: Its Nature, Sustainability, and Other IssuesEvaluating Resources for Ecotourism, Particularly in ChinaTourism Development in Yunnan: A Case StudyUnbalanced Growth, Growth Pole Theory and Tourism DevelopmentIdentifying Whether Tourism is a Leading Sector or Growth Pole: Application of I-O AnalysisChina's Tourism Development in Retrospect and ProspectReadership: Undergraduates, graduate students, researchers and policy-makers in tourism management.Key Features:The book is the Proceedings of the AEPA2010, which is one of the most famous international conferences in the field of engineering plasticityAll the papers are focused on basic theory innovation and its industrial applicationThe authors are experts in this field