Abstract: The Shilin scenery and historical Spots (lately known as the Shilin national park) was founded firstly in 1930s.The development of the Shilin karst landscape resources with local ethnic cultural resourc es in the Park experienced from as a local sight-seeing place, through an excursion destination serving for the central city, to the basis of the regional pillar industry of both Shilin Yi autonomous County and Kunming city. An economic system has affected the Shilin tourism industry. The products of the Shilin tourism industry are mainly to host the sight-seeing tourists under the planned system,and the main parts of the Shilin tourism income are from the tourist tickets, which gives out different effects on various levels of the economy in the county. The Shilin tourism economy brings a positive effect on the county-level economic structure, industrial adjustment, state fiscal levy and governmental revenue. In the last 5 years, the income from the Shilin tourism averagely makes up 9%～11% of annual GDP, 27.9%～33% of the third industryincome, 10.8%～40.1% fiscal levy. However, the development of the Shilin tourism did not produce significant effects on local agriculture, employment of rural citizens and family revenue here compared to effects on the county-level economy, and then the positive effects from the Shilin tourism reduce with distance increment away from the tourist centre in the Park. The rural citizens who receive economic interests of the Shilin tourism are limited within the villages located at the sight-seeing centre of the Park and only 15% of population of the Park. The percentage of rural citizens working in the third industry in the tourism centre of the Park is 7%～35% higher than in other places. The results from the investigation of working fields of the villager s in the local tourism industry show that the local villagers are not actively involved in the tourism industry, and the common situations for them are that most of them are employed by the administration of the Shilin Park after their farming lands were expropriated, and some become individual operators and some are employed by outside employers who operate tourism enterprises in the Park. Their working fields mainly are in food-beverage service, environmental sanitation, tree planting, making and selling local ethnic arts as well as tourist transportation and tourist guide. It is proposed, that more efforts should be made in developing rural economy by improving the coordination of village infrastructure, agriculture and rural citizens` employment with the tourism industry of the Shilin Park.

Key words: Shilin scenery and historical spot, tourist industry, rural economy