Steven Jiang writes:
Xi, an avid soccer fan, isn’t known to be a golfer — and he’s been waging a war on the sport in his country.Since he came to power nearly five years ago, Xi’s government has shut down scores of golf courses across China and effectively banned the 88 million members of the ruling Communist Party from playing.“For Xi, golf is just such a touchy topic back home, saddled with so much baggage — the optics would be awful, with or without Trump,” said Dan Washburn, author of “The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream,” a book on the tumultuous history of golf in China.“It’s a symbol of the corruption Xi has been railing against,” he added. “It represents a lot of the things he has spent much of his presidency fighting, so it’s hard to envision the government embracing the game any time soon — at least publicly.”