19 out of 20 Courses in Beijing Are Illegal
by Adam Fonseca on Mar 8, 2010 10:45 AM EST
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According to a member of the law committee branch of China's parliament, only one golf course in twenty have been legally developed in Beijing.
Simply put, China has been hurting for land for the better half of a decade. Boasting the largest population on Earth, lawmakers in the country decided to pass a moratorium on golf course development in 2004 and again last year. Despite this decision, however, many rogue developers are still opening new courses every year illegally.
Just how many courses are in the mainland area surrounding major cities like Beijing and Shanghai? According to the China Golf Association (CGA), the number of courses on the mainland tops of at around 500, mainly clustered around the major cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
The only golf course in Beijing that has been labeled as being legally developed is the Beijing International Golf Club, developed in 1986. Of the 19 that are not deemed "legal", perhaps the three most famous courses include Jack Nicklaus-designed Pine Valley, the Beijing Honghua and the CBD International. Professional golf events have even been played on these aforementioned courses, including the European Tour's China Open in recent years.
FanPosts are written by Waggle Room members. Viewpoints expressed do not necessarily reflect those of WaggleRoom.com, editor, Charles Boyer or any other writer or member.
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Correct me if I'm wrong,
but how can someone “develop” a golf course without the Governments permission? This is not a “free” nation, and the officials there know everything that’s going on…If these courses were illegal, you can bet the developers would have been killed or at least disappeared…You don’t have someone like Jack design a course and no one know about it…Jist sayin, after 3 days, fish smell bad too…STUB
It all comes down to one word – corruption. Yes, even in China, you can grease the right palm(s) and get around such niceties as zoning regulations, building codes and the like. So many schoolchildren died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 because of the shoddy construction of many school buildings – IN A KNOWN EARTHQUAKE-PRONE AREA. Have all the contractors involved and the local officials they’ve dealt with been punished yet? Sadly we’ll never really know as that is a sensitive issue there. While certainly not life or death the row about “illegal” golf courses in Beijing, at a time when the authorities are constructing a massive underground aqueduct to bring some of Southern China’s bounty of water to the drier North, bears closer examination.
Kevin
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