The OP hasn't bothered to return, but this thread still might be useful to others reading and thinking about how to approach a potential pleasure trip to China, which for some reason seems to scare newbies more than most other Asian countries. Preplanned group tours seem to be a solution for two categories of people:
1) Those who are too intimidated or too lazy to do some background research and come up with an itinerary based on their time and interests. ("It's easier to just point to a catalog and pick...")
2) Those who are too intimidated, too lazy, or lack the time to set up the essential logistics. This includes those fearful of the language barrier.

For Group 1 types, not sure what advice I can give. I can't imagine travelling anywhere, much less a country like China, without doing a month or three of background reading/research and coming up with my personal Must See & Do list.

For Group 2 types who have a good feel for what they want and just can't figure out how to get there but don't want to default to a group tour, you can, in a few hours, set up the basic framework as Peter N-H laid out, then flesh out the "bones" locally when you arrive in each place. A lot of people unfamiliar with China and developing Asia don't realize that it's primarily a last-minute "come as you are, make it up as you go" kind of place and advance arrangements don't need to be made for most sightseeing and activities. The only exception would be someplace REALLY off the beaten track and/or involving specialty equipment (like whitewater rafting or mountain climbing). I do think Peter's method works best if your touring is major-Chinese city based and you are making straightforward intercity connections. If you are trying to do some atypical routing esp via minor towns, or have a touring theme like following the route of the historic Long March, then it gets trickier to do esp if you are on a limited time frame. Though I'm guessing about 90% of visitors new to China never stray very far from the main tourist trail.

A middle-ground option , particularly if you want some customization or special features, is to plan your time frame and general itinerary, pick your preferred hotel(s) and method of transport, and contact a good Chinese provider directly for a proposal, which if acceptable, puts much of the pesky ground details on their shoulders, yet cuts out the Western marketing company that is the retail front man. You can include or exclude what you like in your specification to the Chinese company, but you must be very clear. You can select any level of luxury you require, though this is mostly in the choice of accommodations and to a lesser extent, meals and transport.

For various reasons I won't go into, this middle ground is the way I did it when I set up a China tour for my parents a few years ago. We jointly set the itinerary based on their interests/time frame, I made the domestic flight arrangements, and the company I selected made the hotel arrangements (mostly 4*, couple of 3* selection with input from me), airport pickup/dropoff and local transportation with private car/driver and local guide, and sightseeing arrangements--some sights designated by parents, others left to guide discretion depending on time. My parents were responsible for getting themselves between cities (they used flights for nearly all intercity travel). We stipulated 3 things:

(a) NO meals to be included, it would be decided on the fly and paid for separately out of pocket, parents would pay for guide/driver lunches while they were all out sightseeing.
(b) NO shopping stops. Period. (My parents hate shopping!) I basically told the Chinese company straight out that they needed to price their proposal at fair cost and profit, with NO kickbacks assumed, and to get this straight with the guides.
(c) Local guide quality most important priority. We stipulated need for experienced English speaking guide, preferably age 35-40+ and with strong historical knowledge. I informed my parents in advance about the tipping vs no-tipping issues, but left it up to them to use their discretion "in the field." (One parent is a chronic overtipper, the other doesn't believe in tipping as a concept at all, so I figured they'd balance each other out like they have for last 50 years. )

Beijing was done by me as I live here. After that, their Oct 2004 trip had 7 major stops over 21 days, with free day or two (no guide) in each of two locations. They reported back that having these "free spirit" days was really good idea for trip over 2 weeks. (China can be surprisingly exhausting to travel around, and this is one of the big problems with a lot of mass group tours, esp if you are beyond middle age or are slower-than-average for health or mobility reasons.) My parents' independent daisy chain of local tours ended up costing about $1450 each, plus $650 each for 7 domestic flights, plus about $300 each for lunches/dinners, plus whatever incidentals they bought/tips they decided to give (if any). Excluding 4 days in Beijing w/me. I calculated that with the exact same components purchased by us independently, we'd have saved about $350 on the daisy chain part. But the convenience and seamless extra handling/care was worth the cost differential to them since I couldn't go with them everywhere. And in a couple of places where there were some minor unforeseen hiccups, the handling company in Beijing dealt with re-work quickly and skillfully. It was a highly successful tour for them and they reported all their local guides were excellent and just as specified.

Note that this middle ground option still takes about 60-70% of the time it would take to directly do all component arrangements yourself, as you still have to do itinerary research and planning, and deal with the Chinese tour company back-and-forth a bit. But it does save on the in-China time and effort and (importantly) worry, as you arrive in each location with the logistics already squared away. So it might be a very viable option for some of the readers out there who need to find a balance between tour content, convenience, and thriftiness.