While more than 400 golf courses have been built since 2004, almost all of them are illegal.
(Ecns.cn)--China's golf courses have seen tremendous growth over the last decade. Although China's central government has not yet released official statistics on the total number of Chinese courses for this year, estimates from the Beijing Forestry University's Golf Education and Research Center suggest that by the end of 2010 China had a total of roughly 600 courses nationwide, up from only 170 total courses in 2004. The industry has seen high single or double digit growth for most of this century, with 2010 growth reaching a whopping 13.5% and beating China's national GDP growth rate for that year by almost 4 percent. *
These courses are no trifling affairs either. A recent industry white paper, though estimating China's total courses at only 395 nationwide, also counted a total of 8814 holes, suggesting that many of these courses are much larger than the 18-hole standard (8814 holes would convert to roughly 490 18-hole courses). It also estimated that the total surface area of grass maintained by China's courses amounts to 43% more than their American counterparts, a staggering figure even if it does not include unmaintained areas (of which a comparatively water-rich America would doubtless have more).
It may come as a surprise, then, that of these 600 or so courses, nearly all are illegal and have been since the Chinese government issued a ban in 2004 that, with the exception of the island province of Hainan, forbid the construction of any new courses nationwide (a ban it has since re-issued at least ten times). Only ten Chinese courses have been officially endorsed and approved by China's central government, which fears that new courses would take up productive agricultural land and put additional demands on China's already-strained water resources. In fact, as Wu Ruocheng, a veteran of China's golf industry, notes, "What's unusual is that precisely the period in which the golf industry began to pick up speed highly corresponds to the period in which it was forbidden by [government] policy."
Why then has China's golf industry flourished despite its lack of official sanction? Part of the issue seems to be resistance from local government. For example, although China's National Development and Reform Commission issued a "top priority" notice ordering provincial and county government officials to compile a list of local illegal courses and submit it to the commission by late June, not one has yet complied, citing, among other things, incomplete statistical work as the reason for their tardiness (in Hunan a government official even told reporters that "the cleaning up of [this] province's golf courses is not worth your attention"). Even in Beijing, where total courses have tripled from 20 in 2004 to 60 by the end of 2010 and more than 100 18-hole courses lie within a half-hour's drive of Tiananmen Square, China's high officials have generally failed to prevent local governments from allowing the construction of new courses, with China's Ministry of Land and Resources repeatedly criticizing investigations conducted by lower government departments in the Beijing area.
