china Big Brother Is Watching

As you’ve probably heard, China’s central government is again cracking down on golf development as part of its continuing attempt to preserve farm land and conserve water. So once again it's time to ask the obvious question: Will this new get-tough policy and stricter construction oversight put a chill on golf development?

Brian Curley, one of the headliners at Scottsdale, Arizona-based Schmidt Curley Golf Design, doesn’t think so. If a slow-down occurs, he says, it won’t come about as a result of government intervention but rather as a result of free-market principles -- a simple matter of supply outstripping demand.

“There are a lot of moving parts in China,” says Curley. “It’s hard to predict who’ll pick up some clubs and start to play. It’s not like building condos, where you know the number of people in an area and can predict the number of units needed. With golf, it’s about people taking up a sport that they didn’t play last year.”

Officially speaking, of course, a moratorium on golf construction in the People’s Republic has been in place since 2004. Not that it’s caused the nation’s golf developers to lose any sleep. Since the moratorium was imposed, according to the Xinhua news service, the number of courses in China has grown from 170 to more than 570.

How much of that construction has run afoul of the law? Well, Xinhua reports that “only 10” of the new courses “were approved by the government and given business licenses, which implies that most of China’s golf courses were illegally built.”

If only 10 of China’s nearly 600 courses have been built legally, then some of Curley’s courses must certainly be among the illegals. Curley has designed or co-designed roughly 30 courses in China, two-thirds of them at the Mission Hills mega-resorts in Shenzhen and on Hainan Island. The courses on Hainan Island are permitted, because the construction moratorium covers only mainland China. It doesn’t extend to Hainan Island, which tourism officials aim to transform into the nation’s premier vacation destination.

So how many of Curley’s 20 other courses were built illegally?

It’s hard to say. As the central government begins to scrutinize golf development, it may discover that it’s hard to police construction activity in a nation as big as China. Just because a golf course hasn’t been approved by the central government doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been approved by a local or provincial government.

It was recently reported, for example, that the three courses Curley designed for the Stone Forest community in Yunnan Province were built illegally. A government official with oversight in the area told China Daily that his agency issued a stop-work order to Stone Forest’s developer, Yuantong Investment Company, in August 2010. “The company didn’t heed us,” he said.

But what exactly was Yuantong supposed to heed?

Stone Forest’s golf courses had been cleared by local officials before ground was broken, according to a statement made by Yuantong’s deputy general manager to China Central Television. In addition, the courses had been under construction since 2008, and the stop-work order arrived just months before they were scheduled to open. Really, there wasn’t much construction left to stop.

Given that background, how illegal are Stone Forest’s courses –- completely, partially, or not at all?

It’s going to be difficult for China’s central government to untangle such messes. As long as local officials have the authority to approve projects that promise to put people to work, promote tourism, or otherwise boost their economies, it’s hard to imagine the nation’s golf development slowing in a significant way.

Then again, when it comes to China, you never really know. Police states know no bounds. Any nation with a “central government” is by its very nature capable of doing most anything.

For his part, Curley is staying as far away from China’s construction controversies as he can.

“We don’t get involved in the politics,” he says. “It’s not our obligation to check on everything a client tells us or translate every document we see. If I had a job in Seattle and the owner told me he had permits, I wouldn’t go to the planning office and check on it.”

Nor does Curley expect many of China’s estimated 1.3 million golfers –- a number that’s expected to grow to 30 million over the next 20 years –- to lose interest in the game anytime soon.

“The game is new and fresh and in a growth cycle,” he says. “I believe golf is a great sport for China. The Chinese are very social and business-minded, so golf suits them well.”