Book excerpt: The tourism and hospitality industry in China witnessed a dramatic increase from 1978 to 2015. The Chinese tourism industry has since become an important component of Chinas economy. The economic benefits of tourism were easily identified and justified when many developing countries started to embrace tourism as an option for development. However, tourism development is influenced by many factors such as regulation policy, labor/education level, urban structure and technological applications. Those factors are challenges in the worlds largest and fastest growing industry. This book makes a systematic analysis of the challenges and issues in tourism development in China. Particularly, this issue seldom appeared in tourism and hospitality literature. Therefore, this book enhances tourism literature by testing tourist-related issues in the 21st century. Furthermore, the government and/or practitioners can improve the management of the tourism sector using this book. This book is divided into two main parts. The first part consists of five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction to domestic tourism development in China. The second chapter is about outbound tourism development in China. The third chapter concerns the change of tourism policies. The fourth chapter is about the relationship between urbanisation and tourism development in China. The fifth chapter discusses the social impacts of tourism development. The second part consists of two cases. The first case delves into the impact of urbanisation on regional hotel development. The second case discusses the application of media strategies to improve Chinas destination image. The case study will provide a practical perspective on tourism development as well as the recent changes and the impacts of tourism development on society.