{"id":709,"date":"2011-10-10T15:33:36","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=709"},"modified":"2011-10-10T20:52:57","modified_gmt":"2011-10-11T01:52:57","slug":"the-implications-of-charles-manns-new-book-1493-for-golfs-future-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/709\/the-implications-of-charles-manns-new-book-1493-for-golfs-future-in-china","title":{"rendered":"The Implications of Charles Mann’s New Book, 1493, for Golf\u2019s Future in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Mann’s observations about China’s role in the forging of the modern world in his brilliant new book, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created<\/em>, are especially fascinating in light of China’s embrace of golf.\u00a0 A late-blooming minor component of the Columbian exchange, golf has a peculiar status in China\u2014both condemned and celebrated.\u00a0 \u00a0Like much of what China has borrowed from the west, golf in the Celestial Kingdom has acquired a distinctive Chinese flavor.<\/p>\n

A recent article in China Daily USA<\/em> reports that only the rich play golf in China.\u00a0\u00a0 Chinese golf is certainly elitist, keeping with the Chinese tradition of preserving luxury goods for the emperor and his circle. \u00a0That\u2019s part of golf\u2019s attraction to young people, who flood the annual golf shows in Guangzhou and Beijing\u2014they aspire to a lifestyle that includes playing golf.\u00a0 Membership fees at Chinese golf clubs\u2014and there are no daily fee courses in China, both for economic and cultural reasons\u2014 range from 100,000 to 1.7 million Yuan, or in US dollars, between $15,685 and $266,650.\u00a0 And this in a country with an average per capita<\/em> income of $4,400, compared to the US\u2019s $46,860.<\/p>\n

One avid Chinese golfer, described in the China Daily<\/em> story as a Beijing businessman who plays golf every day and spends $15,640 annually to support his habit, called golf \u201cgreen opium,\u201d linking it to another famous addiction introduced to China by the West.\u00a0\u00a0 Britain\u2019s opium smuggling from India led to the world\u2019s first drug wars, the 19th<\/sup> century Opium Wars.\u00a0\u00a0 American merchants were also complicit in this trade.\u00a0\u00a0 These original narcotraficantes<\/em>\u2019 ruthless disregard for the Chinese peoples\u2019 well-being was equal to the contempt any Mexican or Colombian drug lord holds for the gringos<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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The Original Chinese Golfer? The Ming Emperor Xuande, 15th Century. <\/p><\/div>\n

Now China’s emperor is called the Premier, and he’s no longer born into the job. \u00a0The premier’s courtiers–the inner circle of the ruling Communist party–play golf.\u00a0 There is a tight link in China, despite its official adherence to communism, between wealth, privilege and political power.\u00a0\u00a0 The government\u2019s policies since 2004 have officially circumscribed golf\u2019s development, in order to preserve farm land and water.\u00a0\u00a0 But this official moratorium by the State Council was ignored until the summer of 2011, when, as the China Daily article puts it, \u201c11 Chinese ministries collectively ordered new checks on all golf courses to prevent illegal land use and seizure and to ensure no loss of farmland in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enforcing the moratorium has had a powerful effect on the group of western golf course architects, project managers, course operators and others who have a stake in China\u2019s golf industry.\u00a0\u00a0 The collapse of the US real estate market had already vitiated the demand for their services at home.\u00a0\u00a0 China is without question the most powerful developing market in golf, and the uncertainty over its future is very worrisome to industry insiders, among whom I include myself.<\/p>\n

1493<\/em> helped me understand how China\u2019s golf scene fits into larger patterns of Chinese politics and history.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve wondered why, if there really was a moratorium in place since 2004, our clients in the provinces tended to pay it little heed.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s partly because China is a culturally complex country, where conflicts between the capital and the provinces are historically endemic.\u00a0 Local leaders in Fujian province, or in Yunnan or Sichuan or Guangdong, have always tried to trick the big boys in Beijing.<\/p>\n

Two years ago I was riding from the city center of Chengdu toward a site where our client intended to develop a large real estate project with 36 holes of golf.\u00a0\u00a0 Chengdu is the capital and most important city in Sichuan province, a region admired throughout China for its natural beauty and cuisine.\u00a0\u00a0 Giant pandas are native to the bamboo forests along the mountain slopes in western Sichuan.<\/p>\n

As we were driving south, I noticed a complex of buildings that looked sort of like the Bird\u2019s Nest stadium in Beijing, but on an even grander scale.\u00a0 There were a number of linked buildings nestled within elaborately landscaped grounds, but no evidence of any activity going on in any of them.\u00a0\u00a0 I asked our client what these buildings were, and got a wan, wry smile in reply.<\/p>\n

Sichuan province, you\u2019ll recall, had a terrible earthquake in the spring of 2008.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The epicenter was about 80 kilometers northwest of Chengdu, but the quake was felt as far away as Beijing.\u00a0\u00a0 Schools collapsed, and thousands of children were killed, which led to charges of corruption against the officials in charge of building the classrooms.\u00a0 More than 70,000 people were killed and millions left homeless.\u00a0 \u00a0Premier Wen Jiabao came down from Beijing to assess the damage and assist in guiding the rescue operations.\u00a0 And here\u2019s where the new building complex comes back into the picture.<\/p>\n

This was the new administrative headquarters for the party and the municipal government.\u00a0 Designed by the French architect Paul Andreu, who also designed the new opera house in Beijing, the complex reportedly cost $180 million.\u00a0 A new \u201cTechnology and Science Enterprising Center\u201d was also part of the complex.\u00a0 In the context of millions of people left homeless by the earthquake, coupled with intense public criticism over shoddy construction practices having contributed to the loss of life, the big cheeses from Beijing ordered the Sichuanese to get rid of these new buildings.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Local officials announced that they would sell them.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s why they were sitting empty a year later.\u00a0\u00a0 But according to a BBC report in the spring of this year, the buildings have not been sold.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As Charles Mann demonstrates in 1493<\/em>, that\u2019s a typical narrative in China.\u00a0 Orders come down from Beijing, local officials announce their capitulation, and then nothing more happens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the feud- and faction-ridden Ming court,\u201d Mann writes, referring to the period between 1368 and 1644, when China first encountered western traders arriving by sea, \u201cgovernment policies were often accidental by-products of ministerial intrigues, enacted with little regard for their actual effects.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Echoes of these Ming policies reverberate off the walls today in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing neighborhood where the present government is headquartered.<\/p>\n

Mann writes about the wonderfully convoluted trade practices that evolved among Chinese and European merchants, for example, especially the relationship between Fujianese and Spanish traders through the port of Manila in the Philippines.\u00a0 \u00a0The emperors wanted a monopoly on trade, just as the current government preserves its monopoly on land.\u00a0\u00a0 But the policies prohibiting trade didn\u2019t work for the emperors, and the current land policies have created a giant headache for the central government.<\/p>\n

Throughout it all, the qualities that have made China preeminent in so many arenas, whatever the shifts in regimes or policies, shine through.\u00a0\u00a0 Our tendency to think of Chinese manufacturers producing products for the global economy as something unique to the post-Mao era is misplaced, as Mann makes clear.\u00a0 \u00a0The Chinese in the Philippines were restricted to a ghetto adjacent to Manila called the Pari\u00e1n.\u00a0 \u201cPari\u00e1n artisans and merchants\u2026\u201d\u2014most from Fujian province, Mann notes\u2014\u201csold the Spaniards everything from roof tiles to marble statues of baby Jesus\u2014\u2018much prettier articles than are made in Spain,\u2019\u201d noted a Spanish clergyman in Manila, \u201cand sometimes so cheap that I am ashamed to mention it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinese tailors were also making \u201cperfect knockoffs of the latest European styles.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The Europeans then tried to abolish trade in finished goods, wanting only the cloth\u2014rehearsing disputes that would echo in modern trade agreements.<\/p>\n

Mann also describes how the introduction of American crops\u2014particularly the sweet potato, maize, and tobacco\u2014radically transformed the Chinese countryside.\u00a0 Vast new regions of Sichuan, for example, which is described prior to the end of the 18th<\/sup> century as a \u201cbig, empty place,\u201d were settled.\u00a0 Just as the potato facilitated a population boom in Ireland, with tragic consequences, the American crops introduced to China instigated a series of transformations that ruptured the Emperor\u2019s control over the provinces.\u00a0 Forests cleared to grow tobacco, even though the crop was officially prohibited, resulted in shortages of rice and inflated food prices.\u00a0 \u00a0Hungry people will fight to survive, and rebellions against imperial authority punctuate China\u2019s history.\u00a0\u00a0 China\u2019s current rulers obsess over food security.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a direct link between the government\u2019s commitment to low food prices and its complicated attitude toward golf development.<\/p>\n

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Tulou in Fujian<\/p><\/div>\n

There isn\u2019t space to review all of Mann\u2019s analysis here, but I recommend that anyone with an interest in China\u2019s economy\u2014and especially people in the golf business\u2014pick up a copy of 1493<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Pay close attention to \u201cPart Two: Pacific Journeys.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Among the episodes of Chinese history recounted in 1493<\/em> is the tale of the Hakka people after the introduction of American crops to China.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Hakka historically practiced slash and burn agriculture on hilly, marginal land in southern China, occupying parts of Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan Provinces.\u00a0 They lived collectively in large, round, well-defended structures called tulou<\/em>. \u00a0\u00a0They quickly adopted tobacco as a cash crop, contributing to the crisis described above. \u00a0The environmental effects of the deforestation practices following the introduction of tobacco are still in evidence in southern China.<\/p>\n

The new <\/a>Mission Hills golf resort on Hainan Island is one of China\u2019s grandest golf developments, following on the success of the original Mission Hills in Shenzhen.\u00a0\u00a0 There are ten new courses designed by Schmidt-Curley, along with villas, hotels and spa.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a grand complex, the equal or better of any golf resort in the world.\u00a0\u00a0 And one of the architectural themes at Mission Hills Haikou is a tribute to the tulou<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Guests with a view from the upper floors of the hotel toward the south will see the rounded walls of a large faux-tulou<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Merging an ancient Chinese architectural style with the grandiose amenities of a modern golf resort, Mission Hills\u2019 version of the tulou<\/em> expresses a typically contemporary Chinese affection for the ancient and enduring leavened with the allure of foreign luxuries.<\/p>\n

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