Wayne Ma reports: China has nearly 1.4 billion people, but at most perhaps three million golfers, Gilligan said. New golf-course construction has technically been banned since 2004, and the country has less than 500 courses—compared with more than 14,000 in the U.S. The sport has …
Read MoreWSJ: In China, the Legal Status of Many Golf Courses Is Full of Holes
Alyssa Abkowitz writes in a Wall Street Journal front-page story: Lately, President Xi Jinping’s austerity campaign has sent the sport into a sand trap: More than 60 courses have been closed and several Communist Party officials are under investigation for hitting the links. Since …
Read MoreIn enthusiastic review, The Wall Street Journal calls Forbidden Game ‘strikingly original’ and ‘gripping’
Edward Chancellor writes: Attempts to explain China’s recent history often fall back on statistics showing the country’s breakneck economic growth: how many tons of steel have been produced, how many miles of high-speed rail constructed. The trouble with this approach is that the figures are …
Read MoreQ&A with the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time blog
Here’s a snippet of my chat with The Wall Street Journal’s Alyssa Abkowitz: THERE’S A BAN ON GOLF COURSE DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA AND YET GOLF IS BOOMING. HOW DOES THAT WORK? There’s a [Chinese] saying I have in the book, “the mountain is high but …
Read More