{"id":2043,"date":"2015-06-28T10:01:36","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T14:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/?p=2043"},"modified":"2016-05-16T11:58:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T15:58:00","slug":"the-guardian-golf-loses-its-gloss-for-chinas-privileged-elite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/the-guardian-golf-loses-its-gloss-for-chinas-privileged-elite\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian: Golf loses its gloss for China\u2019s privileged elite"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Harold Thibault <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2015\/may\/29\/china-golf-course-crackdown-elite-luxury\" target=\"_blank\">writes in <em>The Guardian<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The sport is getting a bad reputation in other ways. To be maintained properly, golf courses have to be watered regularly \u2013 this, at a time when northern China is suffering from chronic water shortages. And building new ones means expropriating farmland, often under highly dubious circumstances \u2013 this at a time when the most heavily populated country on the planet strives daily to maintain enough arable land to feed its people.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nIn March, China\u2019s national development and reform commission, the state\u2019s central planning office, announced the closure of 66 golf clubs \u2013 about one out of every 10 in the country, according to American journalist Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream .<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nThat\u2019s a rough estimate, he admits: \u201cNobody knows the exact number of golf clubs in China \u2013 it\u2019s somewhere between 600 and 1,000.\u201d The Chinese government ordered a stop to new construction in 2004, but the number of clubs has tripled since then in other guises, lumped in with acceptable projects such as protected nature reserves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harold Thibault writes in The Guardian: The sport is getting a bad reputation in other ways. To be maintained properly, golf courses have to be watered regularly \u2013 this, at a time when northern China is suffering from chronic water shortages. And building new ones &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,24],"tags":[33,21,372],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-featured","tag-media","tag-press","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2045,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions\/2045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}