China closes 66 illegal golf courses.
news.yahoo.com/[...]
Never understood with land being so precious in China why they would allow so many golf courses. What a waste of land in my opinion. Yunnan has a few golf courses.
China closes 66 illegal golf courses.
news.yahoo.com/[...]
Never understood with land being so precious in China why they would allow so many golf courses. What a waste of land in my opinion. Yunnan has a few golf courses.
'they' are the privileged, and allow privileges for the privileged, at least for awhile. Then sometimes they change the privileges.
The main point is not actually to play golf, which is attractive enough - the point is to radiate the status of one who is privileged. Golf is a marker, but there are others, and in the end it doesn't really matter too much what they are.
Cars, of course, preferably with tinted windows, and the more expensive the better.
Expensive apartments....list is endless, consisting of almost anything, the main point being that it's something most people can't/don't have. World economy runs on this kind of idiocy.
I thought I'd seen it all, but I recently met a rich businessman who had bought donor eggs from an ivy league student in the states so he could pop out his very own genius hunxue'ers (to be fair, the kids were pretty cute. Not sure how smart they are).
As for why so many golf courses were allowed despite scarcity of land and water, the article does touch on that. There was a moratorium on new golf courses about a decade ago, but local governments, dependent on land sales for revenues, and eager to do anything that will bring in high spenders, found ways around it or ignored the law altogether.
I think that many of these illegal golf courses are attached to real estate developments. It makes the real estate more saleable. There is usually one free membership per household. It is a value plus type of marketing. Dianchi Wei Chen properties used to come with a membership of the golf club. However, from what I have been told, most households sold the membership on.
Water is the biggest issue. I think I read somewhere that upto 10% of Beijing's fresh water supply was being used on golf courses, and this was a major driver for the outlawing of them (no pun intended).
"China water imports of 148.6 billion cubic meters last year handily exceeded the 569 MILLION cubic meters of oil that the United States imported."
Nasty golfers - waste of space and especially waste of water - close every golf course! let them play fuzzball!
Did they ever close the golf course built in the Stone Forest?