Capitalist road leads to golf

BEIJING - Fore! It may once have been seen as a decadent distraction for capitalists, but these days golf is the sport of choice for even the most ideologically driven cadres, and now a prestigious Chinese university is putting golf on the curriculum.

Golfers can tee off as part of their physical education programme at Peking University, one of China's leading academic addresses, where Mao Zedong once worked in the library, says the Beijing News.

Golf has long baffled the Communist Party and has been officially viewed as profoundly bourgeois.

At the same time, there has always been a sneaking regard for the game.

Former Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang was known to knock a ball around the links. He spent his last years under house arrest, but when he did get out he would play the occasional round.

Golf is now an acceptable way for Chinese communists to spend their time and since China's first course was opened 22 years ago, it has become very popular among the new rich.

There are 200 golf courses in China, up from 20 in the 1980s, and the golf market is estimated to be worth about US$7 billion ($10.84 billion) a year. Two million Chinese regularly play the sport some call "green opium".

For Peking University students, old habits die hard. "Golf isn't a proletarian sport. Most students wouldn't be able to afford it and the university should concentrate on providing better facilities for more popular sports," one young ideologue told the newspaper.

But, said a colleague in the business studies department: "Golf is very popular among businessmen and white collar workers and the university has to keep up with the times."

China is already home to the world's largest golf course, the 180-hole Mission Hills in Shenzhen.

There are now a few notable Chinese golfers, such as Zhang Lianwei, the first Chinese player to compete at the Masters, and more junior golfers are expected.

The next 10 years could see the number of courses reach 1000 as hotels race to build golf resorts.

Earlier this year, the Chinese launched an exhibition which argued that the game actually originated in China in 945 and Mongolian travellers took chuiwan - chui means "to hit", and wan is "ball" - to Europe.

The rules were said to have been laid down in a 1282 book called or Manual of Ball Games.

- INDEPENDENT