Mu Cang Chai district identifies socio-economic development with a focus on tourism development associated with preserving and promoting the value of national cultural identity as both a goal, a task and a solution to create livelihoods, helping people have stable income and escape poverty sustainably, moving towards building Mu Cang Chai into a tourist district - a destination with "Identity, safety, friendliness", striving to basically no longer be a poor district by 2025, and no longer be a poor district by 2030.

Mu Cang Chai district has proposed and built the District Planning Project and the Project to build Mu Cang Chai into a tourist district. Currently, 3 national intangible cultural heritages recognized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism include: New Rice Celebration; Mong Panpipe Performance Art and the art of using beeswax to create patterns on fabric of the Mong people in Mu Cang Chai.

The district always focuses on preserving and transmitting the Mong ethnic cultural identity to generations and classes of people, especially the young generation, to preserve and promote traditional cultural values such as: teach young people traditonal vocation (pipe making, brocade weaving or beeswax painting on fabric...) or bring dances such as to teach at at schools;

Every year, Mu Cang Chai periodically organizes festivals such as: Festival to explore the terraced fields, "Celebrating new rice" Festival, "Pounding rice cakes" Competition, Beeswax pattern drawing competition, "To Day flower" Festival, Mong Khen Festival, Mong ethnic costume performance competition, Mong flute competition... These activities not only contribute to preserving and promoting the cultural identity of the Mong ethnic group but also help promote and introduce the image of the land and people of Mu Cang Chai, attracting a large number of local people, domestic and foreign tourists to participate.

In addition, the district always pays attention to promoting the program of regional cooperation and development between Mu Cang Chai, Van Chan, Tram Tau districts (Yen Bai province) with Bac Yen, Muong La districts (Son La province) and Sa Pa town, Lao Cai province in the field of agricultural and tourism development associated with preserving ethnic culture.

All activities to preserve and promote the above cultural values ​​have contributed to promoting the economic development and tourism services of the district. By the end of 2023, the district have over 1,250 households engaged in trade and service activities, including 139 motels and homestays with a capacity of over 3,000 guests/night and 40 restaurants and eateries, attracting over 370,000 visitors, bringing in tourism revenue of nearly 360 billion VND...

Along with the development of the tourism industry, the effectiveness of implementing national target programs, development support policies of the Central Government and the province in the area, the district's socio-economy continued to have new developments, especially the work of sustainable poverty reduction continued to achieve many encouraging results. The multidimensional poverty reduction rate in 2023 reached 12.42%, of which the poverty reduction rate was 9.83% (the highest rate ever), and the near-poor household rate decreased by 2.59%. Mu Cang Chai continues to become one of the unique destinations for domestic and foreign tourists.