Based on the principle and component analyzing methods,this paper studies the tourism city system of Gansu Province,with the fundamental data from related local government departments,the newest domestic and foreign tourism theories on urban system research,the local statistic and tourism bureaus,and the national standard to the tourism city.We did field investigation in April,2005,the total investigation took 1 month,covering 8000 kilometers by one special bus,and the investigating order was confirmed by the experts work group and the staff of Tourism Department of Gansu Province.There were totally 20 experts in the work group,who are mostly famous scientists in their own research area in China now.In each city,we had an official interview with each city's mayor and different departments of the local government.And this is the first study for a province to decide its own tourism city system and the provincial tourism planning,and this kind of planning has been blank till now in China.Normally,there are lots of tourism resources,markets,transport,and infrastructure,etc.
However, the tourism city system plan has not been researched by the government or scholars yet.By the comprehensive research of each city's potential,developing status,existing problems,we put forward several suggestions for each of the tourism city.And the result shows that there are totally four classes of tourist cities in Gansu province,which are first class tourist center,Lanzhou,the international tourist city,Dunhuang,secondeclass centers like Jiu-Jia,Tianshui,etc,and third class centers like Qingyang,Linxia,etc.This process has been worked out by the component & factor clustering analysis in the model of SPSS,and has been contrasted by the national super-excellent tourism city standard.And there should be lively city tourism images and developing models for the tourism cities of Gansu Province according to their own tourism resources,city culture,scenery,history,etc.