"Since the beginning of the year, the golf police have been frisking finished and unfinished golf courses throughout central China's Sichuan province, a hotbed of construction activity."
Two days ago I posed a question about the sanity of exporting the American version of golf to China. With that soul-searching out of the way, the latest installment of great coverage from China by Dan Washburn is up at Slate.com. Titled "The Forbidden Game: China's on-again, off-again war against golf" looks at the bizarre relationship between the government and golf course development, highlighted by the partial bulldozing of the prominent King Valley course, slated to host a Ladies Euro Tour event this year.
The bulldozers arrived at dawn in early December. There were more than a dozen lined up outside the gate of the Anji King Valley Country Club, 140 miles southwest of Shanghai. The convoy drove past the fountain, the bronze knight, and the Tudor-style clubhouse, and arrived at the multimillion-dollar 18-hole course that had been open for little more than a year and was scheduled to play host to a Ladies European Tour event this October. For 10 days, the excavators ripped up turf and snapped irrigation pipes in the soil below.
King Valley's punishment is the harshest thus far, but some in the industry believe government inspectors (the "Beijing golf police," as they have become known on the ground) could make their way throughout the country, one province at a time. Since the beginning of the year, the golf police have been frisking finished and unfinished golf courses throughout central China's Sichuan province, a hotbed of construction activity. Several projects there have been put on hold pending further review.
And this...
It makes sense that the "rich man's game" would get special scrutiny. While the Communists lifted their ban on the sport in 1984, golf still suffers an image problem in China, where a weekend round costs $160 on average. Critics have contended that such a high-consumption pastime runs counter to several of President Hu Jintao's primary concerns—among them, rural land rights and the widening gap between rich and poor. Farm land is a precious commodity in a country that must feed 21 percent of the world's population with less than 8 percent of its arable land. China has lost more than 30,000 square miles of agricultural land since 1996, and its current total of about 470,000 square miles is getting dangerously close to the 463,323-square-mile baseline the government believes necessary to sustain its massive population. As such, while golf-related construction accounted for a tiny fraction of the reported 42,000 cases of illegal land usage in China last year, it's good PR for the Communist government to say it's tackling such an elitist activity.
For more of Washburn's writings on China and golf, go here, here and here, or follow his blog on Twitter and here is his blog, Par For China, where there is an interesting photo gallery of King Valley's partial destruction.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 08:17 AM
Reader Comments (8)
That's funny
Who could take up this great opportunity ? Who ?????????????????
As for Dan Washburn, that's quite a story he tells, nailing the uneasiness of the Chinese as they lurch forward in their mixed economy that sounds less like communism and more like capitalism everyday.
Bulldozing a course is also the kind of hollow symbolic action that makes me think we have less to fear from the Chinese (as competitors) than many think. "Yes, let's send a message to a few thousand greedy land-hogging golfers. The outrageous abuses of millions of factory workers can go unaddressed because we really have to send a message." On the other hand, centralized authority is a powerful thing. Can you imagine the rounds of hearings, lawsuits and almost endless litigation etc. before a golf course was EVER bulldozed in the states...or for that matter before one ever gets built on "environmentally sensitive land?" My guess is the Chinese courts don't waste too much time on these issues.
Oh, and the very little i know about China's eagerness to share these type of stories especially via the internet tells me the over-under on Washburn's visit to China and his China golf blog is about two weeks.
Continued international success of Indian golfers and importantly, golf being an olympic sport will help get Government (the largest land owner by far) support for the sport. Also, you're likely to see courses on smaller layouts, perhaps 6, 9, 12 or 15 hole courses.
One change I'd like to see is the maximum number of golf clubs reducing to 10 or even 8 (ideally so they can be carried on a golfer's shoulder) to get the sport to really take off in the developing world. Will make golf on smaller courses interesting, a round will take less time (it can take a long time to get to and from our golf courses with developing world infrastructure) and should lead to more innovation in club design etc. I believe this will help the sport grow in the developed world as well.
Would love to hear other thoughts on this.
Thanks for your attention!
That's a great suggestion. I would believe such a secondary/tertiary market probably exists in some form already. Manufacturers may even take back unsold inventory and then "dump" it abroad. It's a very accepted way to cut losses in other industries.
As you point out, the used stuff could be purchased for pennies on the dollar.