This paper asserts that community development is the core component of rural tourism.If community members are not engaged in the tourism process, do not benefit from tourism enterprises and gain no prestige or identity from the process, then tourism is exploitative, and of marginal benefit to rural development.Community development is a process by which a community, a village or a township, improves its economy, gains management skills and promotes its identity and self determination by being engaged in tourism from conception to conclusion.It is about development, not extraction, it is about building assets, both natural and human, not depleting them.In most cases of rural tourism development, the involvement of the community is not easy.Locals are unused to assessing their assets, making long term decisions, taking into account environmental and human costs and dealing with outsiders, both governmental and business.However, the literature shows that there are many variations of community development that have had remarkable success against difficult odds and these are reviewed in the paper and assessed for the general Chinese situation.For example, the scale of tourism development is critical to the success of community participation on the development process.Asset Mapping has been shown to have positive results.Finally, some case studies from GIAHS sites across rural China provide evidence of both the successes and failures of community development efforts in rural tourism development today.