In this paper we have analysed community participation in tourism development within the YRD region during the preparation for 2010 World Expo, in order to understand whether mega-events may represent a stimulus for a greater community involvement in tourism planning in developing countries. The outcomes are extremely interesting, showing that a tourism development policy generally considered to be not-participative such as the Chinese one, has been gradually opening to community involvement, by enlarging the group of deciding elites, sharing benefits, and also involving community participation in decision-making processes. Of course, this work has at least two clear limitations: (i) being a single case study, the results cannot be generalised before being replicated. In this regard, we have presented several explanations of the phenomena observed which may represent a good basis for further research on the topic (in actual fact, the interpretative model may suggest a propositional repository for further studies).