In 2012 , State Ethnic Affairs Com-mission of the People’ s Republic of China( hereaf-ter SEAC ) announced an outline concerning the protection and development of‘ethnic minority vil-lages with special characteristics ’ . The develop-ment of such villages is one of the important tasks of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission:this devel-opment aims to foster the conservation of ethnic culture and to accelerate the development of the ethnic areas in which these villages lie. On Sep-tember 23 , 2014 , the State Ethnic Affairs Com-mission announced guanyu minming shoupi zhong-guo shaoshu minzu tese chunzhai de tongzhi ( No-tice on the Naming of the First Group of China ’ s Ethnic Minority Villages with Special Characteris-tics):340 villages in total were inscribed into the list of this so-called ‘First Batch ’ , among which four villages of Sichuan province were included:( i) Jiefang village of Haqu in Leshan, ( ii) Mutuo Village of Maoxian in Aba, ( iii) Shangmo Village of Songfan in Aba, and ( iv) Guza Village of Seda in Ganzi. With the support of the so-called‘Poverty Al-leviation Policy’ , tourism in ethnic minority villa-ges has been booming; however, this has also re-sulted in a new series of related problems that need to be addressed. Tourism development obviously had reduced regional poverty. Since the 1980s, the promotion of economic development through tourism in the ethnic areas ( with a corresponding improvement of people ’ s living conditions ) has been widely accepted by society. Also in the prov-ince of Sichuan the ‘poverty alleviation through tourism’ policy has led to economic growth and has reduced the poverty of the people in the ethnic mi-nority areas. From 2011 to 2014, the SEAC has invested 57. 8 million Yuan in the development of ethnic minority villages in Sichuan province. This has led to the implementation of 73 projects and has benefited around 100,000 people, 7 indige-nous ethnic groups, and 11 prefectures and munic-ipalities in Sichuan. It seems that this‘poverty al-leviation through tourism ’ ( hereafter PATT ) has resulted in good economic and social effects. Ethnic minority villages in Sichuan share sim-ilar challenges: ( i) a low level of production and productivity,economic backwardness, simplistic e-conomic infrastructure, cultural narrow-minded-ness, a low level of education and personal devel-opment, and a fragile condition of local nature and cultural surroundings. Moreover, tourism has since deeply altered previous development models for these regions: this has also brought many new problems, like e. g. how to correctly distribute the newly acquired economic benefits and profits, as well as cultural and environmental protection is-sues. Many of these problems seem to be only tran-sitional;however, these challenges do ask for the necessary tweaks of the PATT policies. This article thus tries to review the model of PATT as imple-mented in the ethnic villages of Sichuan. The arti-cle explores its different stages/aspects:( i) adap-tation of goals, ( ii) the changing role of the gov-ernment, ( iii) an evolving profit model for local people, and ( iv ) evolving local talent discovery and activation. The first aspect of PATT is the change of the development goals. At first, the priority is to get rid of poverty through tourism. To initially boost local tourism, the government must make major in-vestments: enhancement of the basic infrastruc-ture, creation of a touristic brand and initial adver-tising for the ethnic villages. However, when the PATT has been effectively implemented, and reached a mature stage of development, i. e. the village has become relatively popular and annual numbers of tourists have reached a stable good lev-el, the goals must be adapted: economic develop-ment should change to sustainable development. The new goals would be a combination of local tourism and local related industries, such as handi-craft products, catering and other hospitality busi-nesses etc. When all of this takes place, the eth-nic villages and areas seem to be able to arrive at a green and sustainable development path. The second stage is the change of the role of government. As said, in the beginning large in-vestments in infrastructure, tourism marketing and publicity are needed. In this start-up stage, the village needs quite a lot of human and material re-sources. Without the financial and human aid of the government, it’ s very hard to change a local ethnic minority village into a tourist destination. Hence, the government should play a supportive role during the initial stages of tourism develop-ment, while taking the local villagers ’ will and ethnic culture into consideration: the government should consult with the villagers and encourage the villagers’ participation in the whole development process. When indeed the PATT reaches a mature phase, the local people can take over. By then the locals have gained much experience;their attitudes and business skills have sufficiently improved so the government can take a step back, leaving the villagers to further develop the villages by them-selves. The third aspect is an ‘evolving profit model for local people ’ . During the initial stages of PATT, it’ s all about developing basic tourism pro-jects: at this moment, the main profit models for businesses rely on ( a) ethnic culture projects with distinct characteristics, ( b ) establishing high quality modes of the tourists route, and ( c) pro-moting the unique name and fame of the villages. However, when PATT reaches a mature stage, the villagers themselves must further develop and maintain their unique brand and fame. As said, the government takes a step back while local peo-ple are to develop new related sustainable profit models. The fourth issue is the further evolution of‘local talent discovery and activation ’ or‘talent mechanisms’ . Before the initial stages of PATT in Sichuan, the local villagers of the ethnic minorities had been engaged in traditional agriculture for many years;hence it was difficult for them to tran-sition into modern industries such as tourism and hospitality. Moreover, there were very few locals who had any knowledge of this tourism/hospitality industry. E. g. only some elderly people conducted simplistic tour guide practices for tourists: they were unable to provide any in-depth explanations of the traditional ethnic customs and culture due to language barriers. Thus, outsiders ( including gov-ernment staff and tourism professionals ) had to come in and provide advanced concepts, methods, and training. More importantly, a new ‘local tal-ent team’ had to discover and activate local people with tourism talents/abilities. This allowed for a genuine local tourism industry to come into exist-ence and further evolve. However, when PATT reaches a mature stage, the government should re-turn the economic benefits back to the local people and give them the dominant right to further self-de-velopment. A newly developed professional middle class will then allow the local people to further de-cide on the future of the ethnic villages. After the initial ‘local talent discovery and activation ’ , a more mature ‘talent mechanism ’ should be formed. Led by the best local talents, people from all circles should be encouraged to take part in the further development of the local villages and areas:this allows for greater stability and continuity, while new talents can develop more. This article has analyzed the implementation and adaptation of PATT in the province of Si-chuan, including the ( i) adaptation of goals, ( ii) the changing role of the government, ( iii) an evol-ving profit model for local people, and ( iv) evol-ving local talent discovery and activation. Howev-er, the development of ethnic minority villages still seems to face many difficulties and challenges, and need to be studied and discussed more.