China swings back at golf, shutting down 111 courses

[Howard Riefs]

Here we go again...
On Sunday, China announced the closure of 111 courses following a multi-year campaign to protect land and water resources. An additional 18 courses were ordered to return land, and 47 clubs were told to halt construction....


http://bigstory.ap.org/article/35935ac025064c5faeac9a4b0d3c3c0e


http://www.golfdigest.com/story/china-continues-war-against-golf-closes-111-courses


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/23/china-driving-against-golf-closure-100-courses/

[Mike Bodo]

So much for their initiative to become a world golf power if this is the direction they are going in. They go from one extreme to the next.

[Jaeger Kovich]

Isn't this ruling going to amount to massive losses in real estate?


So much for Hainan being an international tourism destination, and the Hawaii of China.

[MCirba]

Effect, meet cause. 


http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-withdraws-u-s-from-trans-pacific-partnership-1485191020?mod=e2fb

[Ian Andrew]

Effect, meet cause. 


http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-withdraws-u-s-from-trans-pacific-partnership-1485191020?mod=e2fb

Strongly disagree with your premise.

[Tom_Doak]

The news reporting on what's happening in China is so bad, it's almost criminal ... but I guess that is the standard for all forms of news reporting nowadays.


The main story linked cited some American guy living in Xinjiang in western China saying he "had never met anyone who had played golf there," which is not surprising considering there is maybe one course.  Some expert!


I've heard conflicting reports about what's being closed, and am trying to investigate a bit more.  One rumor is that the three courses at Stone Forest have been destroyed, but even Brian Curley doesn't know whether that is true or not.  A lot of this report could be double-counting courses that were not allowed to open at the end of 2014 ... it is hard to imagine that a bunch of new courses were started after that line was drawn in the sand.  But, anything is possible in China!

[MCirba]

Ian,


I am sure you know more than I do on this.  What do you see as the latest reason?

[Kerry Gray]

I agree Tom,
I live in China and I doubt their is another round of closures this large. One course in my area was closed in late 2014. The government bought back the land and all members were made whole financially. But the course is still there being maintained, nobody plays it. We have to ask if they are just waiting for the storm to pass to reopen. Another local club came under scrutiny and has restricted play severely to less than 200 people, mostly employees and friends of the developer. It does not have a license to operate as a golf club so they are obviously trying to stay under the radar. My friend lives here and builds courses for a living and he's still working, although in some pretty remote spots these days.

[Charles Lund]

I've spent some time in Hong Kong in late 2016 and am here for Chinese New Year.

I was playing golf at Discovery Bay where they are doing some renovation on one of the nines.  I spoke with someone supervising the work and he ended up riding the shuttle back to the ferry.

I mentioned Stone Forest and he reported that it is no longer a golf course.

Charles Lund

[John Kavanaugh]

I doubt that I am the only person who has wondered where their life would be today if golf was made more difficult to play in their youth much like China appears to be doing today. In my case I would no doubt be more productive, negating the vice replacing virtue theorem, thus improving the infrastructure of our great nation. I doubt I would have less friends but they would certainly be different friends. Currently I play close to the same number of sets of tennis per year as rounds of golf and could easily make the argument that tennis serves a community as a sport better than golf. The environmental, fitness and family interaction benefits alone. Sorry but tennis is clearly an easier sport to interact with children than golf. I think China has evaluated the long term cost vs benefits of a golfing culture and decided to nip it in the bud.

[Jaeger Kovich]

John - They play a lot of badminton in China. We used to see pick up games on the side of the street in Haikou all the time. It is definitely the game of the people over there!

[Jonathan Webb]

The "official" list and exactly what happens to those courses on the list is as much in the air as the enforcement of China's law that mandates "no smoking inside."

[Jonathan Mallard]

I doubt that I am the only person who has wondered where their life would be today if golf was made more difficult to play in their youth much like China appears to be doing today. In my case I would no doubt be more productive, negating the vice replacing virtue theorem, thus improving the infrastructure of our great nation. I doubt I would have less friends but they would certainly be different friends. Currently I play close to the same number of sets of tennis per year as rounds of golf and could easily make the argument that tennis serves a community as a sport better than golf. The environmental, fitness and family interaction benefits alone. Sorry but tennis is clearly an easier sport to interact with children than golf. I think China has evaluated the long term cost vs benefits of a golfing culture and decided to nip it in the bud.

Wonder what society could ever conceive of a national holiday to Robert Burns?

[Garland Bayley]

...  One rumor is that the three courses at Stone Forest have been destroyed, but even Brian Curley doesn't know whether that is true or not.  ...

China would be right to do this. These should never have been built in the first place. Might as well have routed a golf course through the Old Faithful geyer basin.

[MCirba]

I'm sure I'm talking out my butt and have never been to China much less done business there but it seems to me that the autocratic rulers of that country are torn between maintaining the public perception of eschewing all the capitalistic trappings of the western world while actively seeking the development of the same for a number of reasons including foreign development and investment.

And while they try to actively manage the types and message of the information that gets to their people (perhaps still the world's best at create an "alternative facts" society), in an information-free, shrinking world certainly many outside influences and news reports are filtering in.

Perhaps more than any other President in history Donald Trump is associated with both the excesses of western development and GOLF, in capital letters.   I would think his election would be a message that the Chinese leaders really feel the need to massage and draw distinctions between their society and the decadent western world.   One way to do so is make some big public pronouncement about closing these illegal dens of wickedness, particularly rationalizing it by being for the PEOPLE's more fundamental needs of water, farming, and natural resources.

Whether they actually enforce closure of all these courses is less important than the propaganda value of the message they are sending their people and it sounds to me as though they are already selectively deciding enforcement as some type of political rewards and punishment system anyway, and that will likely continue no matter what they say in public pronouncements.

Again, just a theory, but I've yet to hear anything to make me think I'm too far from the mark.

[John Kavanaugh]

Mike,


I agree with you but would also include the fact that every President since Clinton has been demonized for the time they spent golfing.

[Tom_Doak]

One way to do so is make some big public pronouncement about closing these illegal dens of wickedness, particularly rationalizing it by being for the PEOPLE's more fundamental needs of water, farming, and natural resources.

That was Chariman Mao's view, back when Donald Trump was still in diapers.  And President Xi's father was a close associate of Mao's.  So I think it's more about that -- and about the cash that's exchanged when someone develops a project that's technically illegal -- than it is about Trump.


P.S. to John K:  Maybe Hillary should have run on not being a golfer !!!

[MCirba]

Tom,

Mao was partially correct.   But they are really only dens of wickedness if designed well.   

[Adam Lawrence]

Mike


My reading of the situation, based on talking to a lot of China experts, is that golf is not itself in the firing line especially, but that it is caught in a pretty severe crossfire.


It's well known that President Xi's big priority is to crack down on corruption within the Party; well, unfortunately, golf has been the venue, if you like, for a lot of that corruption. That is the root cause of the ban on Party members becoming members of golf clubs.


Arable land is precious in China; yes it's a huge country, but it has an even huger population, and memories of food shortages are strong. So anything that takes away farmland is likely to be controversial; and anyone who followed the days of major golf development in China cannot be unaware that lots of farmers were removed from their land to allow for the development of golf estates. This was always ethically problematic, even if they were compensated; once central government got involved the results are hardly surprising.


Finally there is the battle for power between central government and Party cadres in the regions. A cynical, but probably honest, golf architect once told me 'The difference between developing golf in China and India is that in China you only have to bribe one guy; in India you might have to bribe a thousand.' This is because in China, the government controls all the land. That's how so much golf got to be built; the local and regional government operatives looked the other way when golf courses were described in planning documents as public parks and so on, presumably because the developers had made it worth their while. Which brings us back to President Xi and his anti-corruption drive...

[David Davis]

     I had a couple updates today from contacts in China. I didn’t know it was appearing in the news as well this was just something I had been asked to look into.
 
Yes, Stone Forest has been shut down and will be put back in original natural state.
 
“on 22 Jan 2017, the Central Government officially announced that 111 golf courses were officially closed and 496 golf courses are allowed to be operated after much rectification works in accordance to regulation set by law.”
 
This was the quote from my contact who is a Chinese GM of a large resort there.
 
He went on to say that courses built after 2004 are the ones that have to be closes since that was when they started building courses without attaining the official permits. Not all new courses are being closed it would seem. Shanqin Bay is ok and has their permits I’m told.
 

[Jaeger Kovich]

I may be wrong and simply jumping to conclusions, but I'm reasonably confident the connection between Shanqin Bay and Citic Bank International is going to help keep it around for a while.

[mike_beene]

Somehow it seems China's golf problem is solved if they blame the true culprit: the motorized golf cart. Ban the electric cart and golf is everything it claims to be and the corruption goes elsewhere. Avoid any labor issues by making it a push cart culture.

[Tom_Doak]

Somehow it seems China's golf problem is solved if they blame the true culprit: the motorized golf cart. Ban the electric cart and golf is everything it claims to be and the corruption goes elsewhere. Avoid any labor issues by making it a push cart culture.

Really? 

[mike_beene]

Tom,probably not really. But I can't escape the thought that golf moves out of pure sport to corporate entertainment negotiation when two people sit on a cart together. And I have used that four hours to get to know someone but the perception is it is western laziness and even decadence. The toothpaste is out of the tube and I realize that. And the weather is sometimes a factor, but isn't Chinese golf largely cart related? And doesn't that affect the party? Not sure.

[mike_beene]

And "Party"should be capitalized