Golf — In China, it's considered the new 'opiate of the people'

You could look it up.

In yesterday's (February 27, 2007) Financial Times, Richard McGregor wrote about the newest bête noire of the Chinese government.

The Internet is so last year.

Here's the article.

Golf enthusiasts in a hole as China brands sport ‘green opium’

During difficult moments in talks on North Korea's nuclear programme, China's chief negotiator, Wu Dawei, sometimes slipped away to thrash out problems over a round of golf with his South Korean counterpart.

Such out-of-work encounters should come as no surprise. More than anywhere, golf is the Asian political and business networking sport of choice, and a staple of top-level dealmaking.

In Japan, politicians can signal a new alliance by playing together publicly. In south-east Asia, ministerial meetings are often preceded by a round of golf to build a convivial atmosphere.

But Mr Wu's games, disclosed to the Financial Times by participants in the talks, have gone unpublicised in China, for good reason. Golf has an image problem in China, and no senior official would dare be caught playing the game in public.

Golf has expanded in the past quarter of a century in China since the re-opening of the economy to the world. The country has 312 courses and about 300,000 regular players - only about 0.02 per cent of the 1.3bn population. "The percentage of the population that plays golf here might as well be zero," said Dennis Allen, the regional manager for TaylorMade, the golf equipment manufacturer, owned by Adidas.

But just when it should be taking off by Asian standards, the game is on the wrong side of the country's political campaigns and has become indelibly linked with corruption. A senior official, Hao Heping, who had been in charge of state purchases of medical equipment, was convicted of taking bribes of $64,000 (£32,000) in the form of golf course memberships. The deadpan report by Xinhua, the official news agency, noted that Mr Hao had not kept a mistress. "His only hobby was golf, and he travelled around the country to play with public funds or money taken in bribes," Xinhua reported.

Since coming to power in 2002, Hu Jintao, China's president, has focused on a number of issues: the gap between rich and poor; the plight of farmers; and the environment, including water.

Golf runs up against all three. It is expensive and elitist, takes scarce supplies of arable land off impoverished farmers, and uses large quantities of both water and environmentally unfriendly pesticides and fertilisers.

A round of golf in China costs anything between $100 and $250, and course memberships, tens of thousands of dollars. With annual average incomes even in the wealthy coastal cities about $1,500, it is not hard to see where golf's elitist image comes from.

Such expense makes the game a sitting target for critics. A hitherto obscure official in coastal Jiangsu province got national publicity in China last month when he called on the Communist party's anti-graft unit to investigate anyone who played golf.

The party already sends circulars to officials warning them not to play (tennis is considered more acceptable). And golf clubs are taxed as a luxury item, along with jewellery, expensive watches and yachts.

So dimly is golf viewed that the official media branded the game "green opium", a pointed reference to the addictive drug associated with China's capitulation to foreigners in the 19th century.

Such slurs make the people in the business of golf, like Mr Allen, tear out their hair. "We need to get to people of influence to prove that golf is not an evil thing," said Mr Allen, in Beijing this month to sign a sponsorship agreement with the China Golf Association. “If we could go back 10 or 15 years and start over, we would have done everything possible not to turn it into an exclusive sport for the rich and famous.”

Mr Allen believes that as China gets richer, golf will be as big as in the rest of Asia. He is probably right. The Chinese are practised at working around restrictions, and while the central government has issued an edict against golf courses, localities competing for investment feel they cannot be without one, or two. They approve courses, as part of villa developments or under the guise of promoting sport and healthy outdoor activities.

The courses are developing new tricks to keep off the radar screen as well. In Beijing, they offer customers the choice of alternative receipts when paying fees: one that records money spent on golf, or the second, more popular option, a receipt that says it was spent at a restaurant.

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Save your money — your GolfPunk magazine will never make it to your Shanghai mailbox.