A CHINESE village has become besieged by monkeys after a plan to woo tourists backfired in a spectacular way.

And now terrorised locals are dealing with the catastrophic fallout of their ill-fated tourism strategy.

It all started in 2003, when a small troop of macaques were introduced to Xianfeng village in China’s southwestern Sichuan Province in a bid to attract tourism, China’s state-run CCTV News reported.

Villagers spent about seven weeks transporting 73 rhesus macaques from a nearby mountain range under the plan masterminded by Xianfeng Village party secretary He Youliang.

“Luring the monkeys wasn’t easy,” Mr He previously said of the mission.

“We spent weeks throwing food onto the road leading to the village and were sometimes able to bring the macaques two or three kilometres closer.

“But whenever they became frightened they would run back into the mountains.”

But once they were settled into their new home, the macaques were a hit.

Thousands of tourists began flocking to the village each weekend to visit its primate residents and local businesses flourished.

Mr He found an investor in a local businessman named Zhou Zhenggui, who set up the Panzhihua Baoding Ecotourism company.

As the village transformed into a scenic park, Mr Zhou’s company hired villagers to care for the monkeys and oversee their interaction with tourists.

But things took a turn for the worst in 2014 when Mr Zhou died suddenly and his company collapsed under the helm of his daughter.

The money stopped flowing in and tourist numbers began to dwindle.

In the meantime, the macaque population swelled. What began as a manageable troop of 73 macaques had grown to more than 600, too many for the villagers to look after and feed.

Locals reportedly expected the monkeys to simply return to the mountains when they stopped being fed — but instead they stuck around, having grown accustomed to life in captivity and no longer able to look after themselves in the wild.

Now, the mushrooming macaque population is wrecking havoc on the village.

They frequently destroy homes, eat valuable fruit and crops, attack and bite tourists and generally terrorise villagers.

“No matter how hard the villagers try, there has been no way of luring the monkeys away from the village,” CCTV News reported.

“And despite the annoyance of having to live alongside these noisy neighbours, the villagers have not come up with a model to boost the local economy if the macaques eventually do leave.”

The macaques are considered a protected species in China and attempts to control their numbers in Xianfeng have been a challenge.

Authorities have managed to trap and relocate about half the population but another 300 macaques remain.

The UK Mirror reports that Panzhihua Baoding Ecotourism ceased operations after selling its last ticket at the end of last month, leaving Xianfeng villagers with little idea of how to cope with their monkey trouble.