Dan Washburn's Blog, page 2

Quartz: Golf is now mandatory at a Chinese elementary school

Josh Horowitz writes in Quartz:

A state-linked school’s embrace of the sport shouldn’t bee seen as a sign China’s government is softening Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream told Quartz.

“I certainly don’t think this hints to any kind of change in Beijing’s official stance toward golf. Just chalk it up as yet another example that little in China is black and white.”

IBT: Amid Chinese Crackdown On Golf, Communist Ban Leaves Future Of Sport In China Uncertain

Tim Marcin writes in the International Business Times:

China has stepped up efforts in 2015 to close the gap between the technical laws of the land and reality.

“China has always seemed to be very good about compartmentalizing its attitudes toward golf,” Washburn said. “You can see this big crackdown on golf on the one side, and on the other side you see some of the biggest international golf tournaments in China, you see the PGA Tour trying to move into China, all the big brands trying to make inroads into China.”

Listen: China has seen the enemy, and it is golf

Listen to my interview with PRI on China’s ongoing crackdown on golf:

Yes. Golf. That seemingly most Western of sports is a unique prism on modern China. Many Chinese want to play, but the Communist Party doesn’t like the game. And today, Communist Party officials officially barred its 88 million members from belonging to a golf club.

But the ban is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s drive to root out extravagance and corruption. For golf has played a role in recent high-profile corruption cases in China.

“This has been a historically bad year for golf in China and that’s really saying a lot,” says Dan Washburn, author of “The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream.” “The game has never really been welcomed with open arms by the country.”

FT: Chinese players battle political attacks against ‘green opium’

Mark Wembridge writes in the The Financial Times:

“Building golf courses may be illegal in China, but no other country has come close to building more than China over the past decade,” says Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream.

“This is a sport that encapsulates China itself. It’s a barometer of the Chinese economy.”

…

“No public official in China should be able to afford membership of an exclusive golf club in China,” says Washburn.

…

Today, there are estimated to be anywhere between 600 and 1,000 courses across the country.

“For the golf industry in China, no one really knows what the rules are. It’s a highly politicised landscape, a legal grey area.

“Beijing can set the rules, but how they are interpreted by local officials is a different matter,” notes Washburn.

“When building a golf course, don’t call it a golf course. Call it a sports space, a green space. The Chinese saying ‘The mountains are high and the emperor is far away’ is apt here.”

Such development has had a detrimental effect on farmers, many of whom were strong-armed into selling their land, says Washburn.

USA Today: How an LPGA player emerged from China’s anti-golf tactics

Rachel Axon writes in an enterprise piece for USA Today:

Despite restrictions imposed by the government and the sport holding virtually no space in the culture of China’s more than 1.3 billion population, golf is enjoying tremendous growth in China. Course construction has been booming for a decade even as a moratorium was established — and often ignored — in 2004. Now, the government is simultaneously closing golf courses as it funnels more support to the game with an eye toward the Olympics, which announced it 2009 it would add golf.

 

“It’s very difficult to understand, but I would say the Chinese government is very good at compartmentalizing its attitudes toward golf,” says Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream. “Golf has always had a rocky road in the country.”

WSJ: In China, the Legal Status of Many Golf Courses Is Full of Holes

Alyssa Abkowitz writes in a Wall Street Journal front-page story:

Lately, President Xi Jinping’s austerity campaign has sent the sport into a sand trap: More than 60 courses have been closed and several Communist Party officials are under investigation for hitting the links.

 

Since the Communist Revolution, when Chairman Mao Zedong declared golf “too bourgeois,” there has been something irrepressible about the sport’s rise in China. It seems only par for the course that most of China’s golf courses have been built since a 2004 law banning such construction, making them technically illegal.

 

“You can say it’s illegal, but you almost need to put quote marks around illegal because more golf courses are getting built in China than anywhere else in the world,” said Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream.

VICE: China Clamps Down on Golf Courses

Zach Bergson writes for VICE:

As economic development spread rapidly in the country at the turn of the century, local and provincial governments—who own a significant portion of the nation’s land—saw golf as a way to increase their tax bases and make money, according to Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game. They sold their land to developers, who often avoided the 2004 ban by incorporating courses into high-end living communities.

 

“There’s this saying [in China] ‘the mountain is high, and the emperor is far away,'” Washburn said. “I think that is very true in the golf industry. Beijing may have its rules, but how it’s interpreted in the provinces is a different story.”

 

Richard Zhang, co-founder of the sports marketing company Ocean 24, said he’s witnessed the correlation between housing developers and golf firsthand. While visiting a mansion community in Laiwu, a city in Shandong province, a friend who resides in the city brought him to a suburban neighborhood where a golf course was being built on the property. Anyone who bought a house in the development received a membership. Zhang said construction has been suspended because of the crackdown.

 

Washburn says golf provides a window into the tensions between China’s central and provincial governments.

The Guardian: Golf loses its gloss for China’s privileged elite

Harold Thibault writes in The Guardian:

The sport is getting a bad reputation in other ways. To be maintained properly, golf courses have to be watered regularly – this, at a time when northern China is suffering from chronic water shortages. And building new ones means expropriating farmland, often under highly dubious circumstances – this at a time when the most heavily populated country on the planet strives daily to maintain enough arable land to feed its people.

 

In March, China’s national development and reform commission, the state’s central planning office, announced the closure of 66 golf clubs – about one out of every 10 in the country, according to American journalist Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream .

 

That’s a rough estimate, he admits: “Nobody knows the exact number of golf clubs in China – it’s somewhere between 600 and 1,000.” The Chinese government ordered a stop to new construction in 2004, but the number of clubs has tripled since then in other guises, lumped in with acceptable projects such as protected nature reserves.

El Mundo: El golf, políticamente incorrecto en China

Alma Lopez Figueiras writes in El Mundo:

Para Dan Washburn, que ha documentado este controvertido boom en su libro ‘El juego prohibido: golf y sueño chino’, el golf no sólo refleja el rápido crecimiento económico de China en las últimas tres décadas, sino que también revela las tensiones que enfrenta el país, particularmente la desigualdad social, las disputas por la tierra en el ámbito rural, el deterioro medioambiental, la burbuja inmobiliaria y la corrupción.

 

“China está llena de contradicciones”, señala Washburn. “Nunca sabes qué esperar, especialmente en lo relativo al golf. Es un lugar donde es difícil imaginar lo que va a pasar”.

Le Monde: Le golf, sport à hauts risques en Chine

Harold Thibault writes in Le Monde:

Ce sport « cumule » d’autres caractéristiques gênantes. L’entretien des parcours nécessite un fort arrosage alors que le nord de la Chine souffre d’un manque d’eau chronique ; leur construction se fait au prix d’expropriations de paysans dans des conditions souvent troubles. Le tout alors que le pays le plus peuplé de la planète mène un combat de chaque instant pour maintenir une superficie de terres arables suffisante à l’échelle des besoins de sa population.

 

Le 30 mars, l’organe de planification de l’Etat-parti, la Commission nationale pour le développement et la réforme, a donc annoncé la fermeture de 66 golfs. Cela correspondrait à 10 % des parcours du pays, estime Dan Washburn, auteur de The Forbidden Game : Golf and the Chinese Dream (2014, One World, 320 pages, non traduit). Ce journaliste et écrivain admet lui-même les limites de son calcul, et pour cause : « Personne ne connaît le nombre exact de golfs dans le pays ; c’est quelque part entre 600 et un millier. » Le gouvernement chinois avait déjà interdit, en 2004, la construction de nouveaux terrains, pour les mêmes raisons. Le nombre de parcours n’en aurait pas moins triplé depuis, mais sous des appellations diverses, par exemple sous couvert de zones naturelles protégées.