Expressing a series of factors such as human settlements,
rural scenery, production mode and lifestyle, rural world heritage sites
comprehensively embody “a joint work of human and nature”. However, a lack
of connotation on rural world heritage sites from World Heritage Center has
resulted in an ambiguity in its implicit meaning and understanding deviation
in academia. Owing to a frequent trend of tourism utilization in rural world
heritage sites, it is necessary to tease out the connotation of rural world heritage
sites for examining their tourism resources characteristics and building a
relationship between tourism utilization and heritage management. This
paper firstly suggests that two sub-categories in which historical village sites
from category of World Culture Heritage and industrial landscape sites from category of World Culture Landscape Heritage should be included in the scope
of rural world heritage sites. Based on an analysis of connotation, the tourism
resources characteristic and development approaches are proposed. First of
all, the tourism resources in rural world heritage sites are featured by country
landscape and unique world heritage value. Although tourism development
exert impact on rural world heritage sites, it would be of positive value in
heritage conservation and local community development. Hence, emphasis
should be placed on heritage conservation in utilizing tourism resources in
addition to sustainable development, market orientation and multistakeholders
participation. Besides, it is imperative to effectively and reasonably make
tourism planning for rural world heritage sites to guarantee authenticity
and integrity of heritage value, which depends on both the coordination
between heritage protection and tourism utilization, and an efficient heritage
management system. In addition, sustainable tourism is widely recommended
by experts and scholars since it can satisfy the needs of cultural integrity,
ecological processes and biological diversity for both tourists and heritage
sites and can fulfil multiple aims of popularity and education, exhibition and
presentation, ecological experience and environmental protection. Although
common features of world heritage value and rural characteristics are both
reflected in rural world heritage sites, two sub- categories of historic village
heritage sites and industrial landscape heritage sites globally represent their
own unique values and inspire different tourist motives. Thus, the tourism
utilization mode should meet diverse tourists’ demand on a basis of exploring
the heritage value under different regional contexts. Moreover, local community
that is the dynamic motive power and protective object of rural world
heritage sites should be involved in an overall coordination of management
and development system in order to strengthen initiatives of community
participation and create opportunities for their independent tourism operation
and world heritage protection. Besides the local community, other stakeholders
including foreign investment firms, local governments and NGOs are of great
necessity in building an effective coordinated model in heritage management
and sustainable tourism development. Three models are concluded for reference
according to respective developing stage and need.