China vows crackdown on illegal golf courses
November 30, 2009
BEIJING (AP)—China plans a major crack down on illegal golf courseconstruction. First, though, it needs to figure out how many of the illicitlinks are in the country.
Construction of new courses has been so rapid, widespread and unregulatedthat Beijing officials can only estimate how many have been built. One guess,appearing in the China Daily newspaper Tuesday, put the number at 2,700 by 2015— up from none before 1984 and more than 500 today.
“We still don’t know the exact figure, but we’re working on it and willhave the information by 2010,” the head of land planning at the Ministry ofLand and Natural Resources, Dong Zuoji, was quoted as saying. “The culpritswill face harsh punishment.”
Alarmed at the loss of arable land in this crowded nation of 1.3 billionpeople, China began restricting golf course construction in the earlier part ofthe decade, with Premier Wen Jiabao vowing in 2007 to enforce a total ban.
Construction has plowed ahead, however, with developers apparently countingon presenting a fait accompli to regulators as has been the case with housingdevelopments built on farmland surrounding Beijing, Shanghai and other majorcities.
An estimated 3 million Chinese play golf and industry revenues from coursesand equipment rose as high as 60 billion yuan ($8.8 billion) last year, ChinaDaily reported. The sport’s backers forecast as many as 20 million potentialChinese golfers taking up the sport.
Golf is very much an elite sport in China, where a round can cost $150—about the average monthly wage for many factory workers.
Memberships at elite clubs such as Shanghai’s Sheshan, home to the HSBCMasters, have risen to about 1.5 million yuan ($220,000). A growing number ofinternational and domestic events have attracted droves of fans and players,while golf’s reintroduction into the Olympic program for 2016 is bound to raiseits profile still further among sports officials obsessed with topping the goldmedal tally.
How officials will reconcile that popularity with the need to rein in courseconstruction isn’t clear.
According to Dong, a joint investigation into illegal courses involving hisministry and a half-dozen other government departments was launched inSeptember.
China Daily said experts plan to use satellite technology to monitor courseconstruction, but the report did not say whether courses would be plowed up andreturned to farmland or whether developers would simply face fines and otherpunishment.
It’s not just 18 hole courses that are encroaching on land intended forother purposes. State broadcaster CCTV recently reported on a controversy inShanghai where a commercial driving range had sprung up in the middle of apublic park.
Comments
Got something to say?
