Johan Nylander focuses heavily on The Forbidden Game in his piece for Forbes:
So how can something be booming and illegal at the same time?
“Golf is a politically taboo topic and tightly linked to corruption,” Dan Washburn said during a speech at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong. “No golf course is being built in China without government involvement.”
Developers and local officials have typically side-stepped the restrictions by filing applications that designate the projects as sports training facilities, eco-parks or other creative types of developments. “Rule number one when building a golf course: don’t call it a golf course,” Washburn said.
In his book “The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream”, he states that golf isn’t just a barometer for the country’s rapid economic rise. It also allows us to examine major concerns, such as the ever widening gap between rich and poor, rural land rights disputes, environmental concerns, a real-estate bubble and “plenty and plenty of corruption”.
Read the whole thing here.