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China swings back at golf by shutting down 111 courses
Published on: 2017-01-24
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060China has launched a renewed crackdown on golf, closing 111 courses in an effort to conserve water and land, and telling members of the ruling Communist Party to stay off the links.


Sunday the courses were closed for improperly using groundwater, arable land or protected land within nature reserves. It said authorities have imposed restrictions on 65 more courses.


China banned the development of new golf courses in 2004, when it had fewer than 200. Since that time, the number of courses has more than tripled.


Developers build courses under the guise of parks or other projects, often with the tacit approval of local officials. In one example chronicled by state media, an illegal golf course boasting 58 villas was originally built as a "public sports park," only to be secretly converted later. Many of China's cities, meanwhile, face severe land shortages and skyrocketing real estate prices.


As in football and basketball, the government has invested in developing homegrown golf talent by importing coaches and promoting the sport. Australian golfer Greg Norman served for a time as an adviser to China's national team. And there are as many as 10,000 youth golfers and more than 300 international-standard competitions each year, said Wang Liwei, secretary-general of the China Golf Association.


Every one of China's 33 provinces and regions has a golf course except for Tibet. Even mountainous, remote Xinjiang, home to most of Chinese's ethnic Uighur minority, has golf courses in the capital of Urumqi and two other cities.

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