Sunday, 6 December 2009

China targets illegal golf links

Crackdown comes amid widespread construction of courses

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Guanyu said...

China targets illegal golf links

Crackdown comes amid widespread construction of courses

02 December 2009

BEIJING: China plans a major crackdown on illegal golf course construction. But first, it needs to figure out how many illicit links the country has.

Construction of new courses has been so rapid, widespread and unregulated that Beijing officials can only estimate the number built.

One forecast in Chinese newspapers suggested the number - both legal and illegal - would grow to 2,700 by 2015 from just over 500 now - and none before 1984.

‘We still don’t know the exact figure, but we’re working on it and will have the information by 2010,’ Mr. Dong Zuoji, the director of land planning at the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, was quoted by the China Daily as saying.

‘The culprits will face harsh punishment.’

Alarmed at the loss of arable land in this crowded nation of 1.3 billion people, the government announced a moratorium on golf course construction in 2004 and Premier Wen Jiabao personally vowed in 2007 to enforce a total ban.

Nevertheless, construction has ploughed ahead, with developers apparently counting on presenting a fait accompli to regulators, just like residential estates built on farmlands surrounding major cities.

In April, a sports company in northern Hebei province was found to have built a golf course that took up 100ha of land meant for other construction purposes as well as 126ha of arable land, said Mr. Sun Huaixin from the Ministry of Supervision, the disciplinary watchdog for civil servants.

Another company in eastern Zhejiang province also illegally built an 18-hole golf course on about 40ha of land, including more than 13ha of arable land, Mr. Sun added.

With farmland at 0.10ha per capita in China, it is ‘quite ridiculous’ to build a sprawling golf course which also uses thousands of cubic metres of water every day just for grass maintenance, Mr. Dong pointed out.

According to Mr. Dong, a joint investigation into illegal courses involving his ministry and six other government bodies was launched in September.

China Daily said the team plans to use satellite technology to monitor course construction across the country.

An estimated 3 million Chinese play golf and industry revenues from courses and equipment rose to as high as 60 billion yuan (S$12 billion) last year, the newspaper said.

The sport’s backers forecast that up to 20 million Chinese have the potential to take up golf.

The game is very much an elite sport in China, where a round can cost US$150 (S$207). Membership fees at elite clubs such as Shanghai’s Sheshan, home to the HSBC Champions Tournament, are as high as about 1.5 million yuan.

A growing number of international and domestic events has attracted droves of Chinese fans and players, while golf’s re-inclusion in the 2016 Olympics is bound to raise its profile still further among China’s sports officials obsessed with topping the Games’ gold medal tally.

But how officials will reconcile that popularity with the need to rein in course construction is not clear.