Abstract The term "the third way" is mainly used in politics. In recently years, western scholars in tourism studies extracted the major ideas of this term and appropriated it to tourism researches. On the bases of introducing the western theory of "the third way" in tourism planning, this paper, from the stand of "the third way", surveyed the development of the popular thought-sustainable tourism and the disadvantages appeared under that tourism planning thought. Then the author summed up the system and the contents of this newly developed theory of "the third way" in tourism planning in the western countries, emphasized the method and the effects of this theory in overcoming the disadvantages resulted by the former tourism planning theory. Under the framework of this newly presented theory, the author checked the "pan-ecology theory" and the "two poles views" problems existed in China's tourism planning, and pointed out that those tourism plannings are unsustainable. Then the author tentatively presented out a "third way" tourism planning framework, which might be appropriate to the situation in China. This framework is a tourism planning system and an operational model, which contains a planning mechanism, two supervision unites and a complete general tourism system. This newly presented framework emphasize setting up a tourism planning supervision unite composed of the representatives from the local government, the master planners as well as the representatives of the local NGOs, under an efficient operation mechanism. And the general tourism system in this new theory includes three aspects:setting up a tourism system, defining the tourism locations and the tourism products. By presenting out this tourism planning system and the operation model, the author sincerely wish that it might attract the attention and discussion of the Chinese scholars, so as to improve the tourism development and planning studies in China.
2004, Vol. 19 
