“All the Tees in China: The Chinese Go Golf Crazy” (Link) does not paint a good picture of the state of golf in China or the state of China in China. I could have told you this from personal observation. What I saw when I visited was a bustling culture, but it seemed like the wheels were turning fast and going nowhere. While the Chinese economy may be growing at dangerous rates…
The economic slowdown means things are not as they were a couple of years ago, but China’s economy is still expected to expand by around 8 per cent a year.
…the way of life for many of its people has not improved dramatically.
With regard to both housing and golf, I saw little of either during my visit. I remember remarking at how few houses I saw -neither city type houses on a small lot nor larger country estates. I don’t know where everyone lived, but there were not many visible houses. This is why the golf course development strategy being employed in China is absurd:
The primary motivation behind developing the game of golf in China is property, not bashing a little white ball around a course. Plush villas pay the green fees.
What make money in most clubs are the villas and apartments ringing the courses. The golf itself is a loss leader, and many of the courses in China are chronically underutilized.
In extreme cases, developers buy up large tracts of farmland on the outskirts of the boom towns of New China: Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin, Beijing and Shanghai. They then start building flashy villas – reasonably priced by UK standards but more than most Chinese families would earn in a lifetime. The courses are often an afterthought, hastily-constructed – even unplayable. The developers don’t care; they can charge a lot more for property near a course.
Sometimes this land is taken illegally with the connivance of corrupt local officials, leading to social unrest as disenfranchised farmers take to the streets and demonstrate, attacking building sites and picketing government offices. China’s arable land is scarce, and the government is worried about a growing wealth gap between the rich of the cities and the poor in the countryside.
Now that sounds like the China I know. Forget the growth, technological advances, and health improvements. It’s about ravaging the masses by taking arable land and replacing it with unaffordable developments that only an elite few can use. I want to know who buys the houses on the courses! Better yet, I want to see the courses and houses!