| (Washington Times) China, China, China. The biggest word in golf development over the past few years has been China. With no new development here in the United States, everyone from golf architects to superintendents to contractors and management groups are headed to the other side of the world to gain work. There are currently six-hundred golf courses open in China. The word is that there are another one-hundred under construction and as many as one-thousand in planning. Personally I have about nine leads that equal about fifteen eighteen-hole equivalents. Whether any of them come to fruition is a question that remains to be answered. All of this activity seems awfully strange when one recognizes that the Chinese government banned new golf course construction back in 2004 on mainland China. The island of Hainan is the only province where the powers that be have embraced golf construction and then for tourism purposes only. During my last trip I learned that the government has shutdown all new construction until a full review of all projects is completed. The shutdown started in early May in Yunnan Province and was quickly been extended to the rest of the country (other than Hainan). The review comes about from the fact that many courses are being illegally built by utilizing farmland, which is the crux of the government’s stance on golf development. It seems smart governance to preserve farmland considering the billions of mouths to feed in China. This is not the first time a country-wide shutdown was demanded from Beijing. In fact it has only been three years since the last review. Projects that are clearly invading farmland are the first to come under scrutiny and odds are projects that are not utilizing farmland and have been officially sanctioned (there are some despite the government’s stance) will not be reviewed. No one is too worried this will end golf development in China, though, and most expect construction to resume. With such a seemingly belligerent attitude toward the golf business by the government, one would think that China golf may be more of a speculative bubble rather than the promised land for our industry which has been effectively exiled from our own lands. The bubble is a very good possibility because the very great majority of the new projects are in process purely to sell real estate at very high levels. In fact, the golf industry may end up being collateral damage to a burst of the overall real estate market in China. READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE>>> |