Thematic Evolution and Transmission Mechanisms of China’s Rural Tourism Policy: A Multi-Level Governance Framework for Sustainable Development

Rural tourism is a key engine for sustainable development, elevated to a strategic level under China’s “Rural Revitalization Strategy”, creating a complex multi-level governance (MLG) policy system whose internal mechanisms are not fully understood. This study aims to analyze the thematic structure, spatio-temporal evolution, and transmission mechanisms of China’s rural tourism policy across central, provincial, and city/county levels. We applied BERTopic topic modeling and spatio-temporal analysis to a corpus of 1174 policy documents from 2005 to 2024. The results reveal a “centrally guided Type I governance” model with a clear functional division: the central level acts as a “top-level strategic designer”, the provincial level as a “key regional hub” for adaptation, and the city/county level as the “frontline of policy implementation”. We identified a vertical transmission chain characterized by a 1–2-year lag, alongside spatial differentiation driven by regional resource endowments at the provincial level and functional needs at the city/county level. This study concludes that China’s rural tourism governance framework is an efficient synergistic system that combines strong central guidance with dynamic local adaptation, providing empirical support for MLG theory in a unitary state and offering insights for optimizing policy coordination.