Abstract This paper summarizes the regional tourism cooperation study in China from 1980s.Firstly, according to the relative uniformity of investigation contents, the author divided the development of this study into four phases, which are the origin phase, the starting phase, the development phase, and the promotion phase.The paper elaborates the characteristics of all phases.Secondly, the paper summarizes the major contents of investigation in the study from three fields, which include the fundamental theory research, the hot issue discussion, and the case study.Thereinto, the summary of fundamental theories involved the study on regions, regional tourism, the mechanism of regional tourism cooperation, and tourism planning.The summary of discussion on hot issues involved the study of macro-tourism concepts, tourism joint promotion, and spatial organic forms of regional tourism joint development.The author sums up four view points of macro-tourism concepts appeared in previous study, two new standpoints of the joint way of tourism promotion and three spatial organic forms of the joint development way of regional tourism such as regional tourism association, tourism network and tourism circle.The summary of case study involved the development of Shanghai's macro-tourism network, Wuhan's macro-tourism circle, cyclo-Tai Lake tourism belt, Lancang River and Meigong River's second-rate regional tourism cooperation, and the tourism common market in Zhujiang delta, and so on.Thirdly, the author made a prospect of the trends of regional tourism cooperation in the future, and put the major focus of attentions on stressing the basic theoretical and methodological building, the regional tourism cooperation mechanism study and the government's force study, etc.
2003, Vol. 18 
