{"id":2168,"date":"2015-09-18T20:44:04","date_gmt":"2015-09-19T00:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/?p=2168"},"modified":"2016-09-23T20:45:39","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T00:45:39","slug":"ft-chinese-players-battle-political-attacks-against-green-opium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/ft-chinese-players-battle-political-attacks-against-green-opium\/","title":{"rendered":"FT: Chinese players battle political attacks against \u2018green opium\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Wembridge writes in the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/7ece0280-c67e-11e4-a13d-00144feab7de.html#axzz4L7sorTfL\" target=\"_blank\">The Financial Times<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cBuilding golf courses may be illegal in China, but no other country has come close to building more than China over the past decade,\u201d says Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a sport that encapsulates China itself. It\u2019s a barometer of the Chinese economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo public official in China should be able to afford membership of an exclusive golf club in China,\u201d says Washburn.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Today, there are estimated to be anywhere between 600 and 1,000 courses across the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the golf industry in China, no one really knows what the rules are. It\u2019s a highly politicised landscape, a legal grey area.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeijing can set the rules, but how they are interpreted by local officials is a different matter,\u201d notes Washburn.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen building a golf course, don\u2019t call it a golf course. Call it a sports space, a green space. The Chinese saying \u2018The mountains are high and the emperor is far away\u2019 is apt here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such development has had a detrimental effect on farmers, many of whom were strong-armed into selling their land, says Washburn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Wembridge writes in the The Financial Times: \u201cBuilding golf courses may be illegal in China, but no other country has come close to building more than China over the past decade,\u201d says Dan Washburn, author of The Forbidden Game: Golf and the Chinese Dream. &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,24],"tags":[65,33,21],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-featured","tag-financial-times","tag-media","tag-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","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=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2169,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions\/2169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danwashburn.com\/forbiddengame\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}