Golf back in the rough with latest course crackdown

China has taken another crushing swing at golf with a massive shut down of courses nationwide over claims they've become places where officials and businessmen gather to play dirty.

"Just like expensive liquor, cars and mansions, golf has become a tool for businessmen to bribe officials," wrote a newspaper affiliated with China's top anti-graft watchdog.

Authorities recently shut down 111 golf courses, citing excessive land allocation and groundwater usage, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced on January 22.

Only 496 courses in China remain in operation, the announcement read.

While some experts believe the move will benefit China's golf industry, others have painted the crackdown as an extension of Chinese President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign.

The golf course clampdown may be aiming to stamp out what are characterized as places where officials and wealthy businessmen score illicit deals, experts claimed.

Major players

Recent data reveals a shift in demographic at China's golf clubs.

Differing from golf's golden age in China - the 1980s and 90s - when courses were dominated by manufacturing moguls, there has been an increase in course memberships among high-level executives and government officials, according to data from Basi Data Research Center from 2014.

Local officials seeking revenue from land sales rely on golf courses to attract potential developers and investors - despite sometimes lacking the land and water resources for 18-holes of green fairway.

"Courses are built and backed by local governments as 'towering' prestige projects in the hopes that higher-level government see them as achievements, even though their construction may be illegal in the first place," said Deng Lianfan, director of Hunan Provincial Collaborative Innovation Center of Anti-corruption, told the Global Times.

Not only do officials turn a blind eye to illegal construction, some are also shareholders in the courses.

"Golf is a luxury sport they use to show off their 'status'," he added.

The results are often breeding grounds for deal-making, where businessmen grease the palms of officials in the form of course membership fees.

"Governmental officials ... are limited by the public when opportunities to profit are around them constantly," said Deng.

Others feel that the crackdown is strategic publicity move for the government to further drum up public support.

"The sport is much beyond the reach of the public, and the large-scale construction of courses is a waste of public resources," said Zhuang Deshui, deputy director with the Research Center for Government Integrity-Building at Peking University.

"The crackdown on courses as part of anti-corruption is a way to build government credibility," said Zhuang.

This isn't the first time China teed off against golf. In 2004, the State Council banned the building of new golf courses.

Though the ban saw temporary success, over 300 more courses were built after the golf course moratorium.

Anti-corruption work ramped up after the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) National Congress in 2012, with crackdowns on both high-profile and low-level officials across the nation.

Over the course of four years, more than 1.16 million corruption cases were filed and nearly 1.2 million have been punished for CPC and government violations, Xinhua News Agency reported.

At least 240 centrally administered officials have been investigated, with 223 receiving punishments, according to Xinhua. In 2016, the top leadership announced that the battle against corruption had gained "crushing momentum."

Back in full swing

China has refrained from a total ban on golf in order to protect legitimate business owners and a sporting culture that goes beyond its stigma in media.

"It is a culture and can be played in variety of ways, which is essential for the future of golf," read a commentary on chinaglof.cc.

The piece goes on to describe golf as a sport of "self-discipline, challenge and being considerate … [all of which] China and the world need for a better future."

Golf insiders are promoting different forms of the sport, from virtual reality to indoor simulators and video games, as ways to counter bias among the public, the piece said.

Governments are also taking steps to promote golf with plans to develop public courses and mini-courses, Sina Weibo-based sports news portal tilianshe reported in January.

By using former landfills and reclaiming other non-arable lands to build golf courses, the government can further help cast golf in a positive light, the report read.