<blockquote>China’s golf boom began in the early 2000s, when local officials and land developers realized that the growing ranks of the country’s status-conscious wealthy class would snap up houses built alongside golf courses and pay top dollar to become members at lavish country clubs, regardless of whether or not they could actually play the game. But, as Washburn notes, the wave of golf course construction that swept the country over the last decade brought with it many of China’s worst ills: “corruption, environmental neglect, disputes over rural land rights, and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor.” Farmers often received only moderate compensation for their land — more money than they had ever seen before in their lives, for sure, but paltry sums compared to the prices fetched when the government turned around and sold that same land to golf course developers. This is one reason why the Communist Party — which came to power on the strength of support from the rural peasantry in the 1940s — banned the construction of new golf courses in 2004.

But directives from the central government are often ignored in distant provinces, especially when there’s money to be made.</blockquote>
via <a href="http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/driving-toward-chinese-dream/#">Driving Toward the Chinese Dream | The Los Angeles Review of Books</a>.