Donald Trump may have played golf with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe earlier this year, but when Chinese president Xi Jinping made his own visit to Mar-a-Lago, a visit to the links was decidedly not on the agenda.
The Chinese dictator has taken aim at golf. In January, 111 Chinese courses were shuttered, with the government citing the misuse of arable land and the need for water conservation as justification. (There were only about 700 golf across China’s 3.7 million square mile area before the crackdown began.) Now, two courses owned by the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda have been closed.
This may seem like bad news only for the small number of Chinese golfers, but it portends several big things. First, and most obviously, Xi Jinping’s campaign against decadence is expanding. He’s already gone after lavish banquets (a staple of local government culture in China), and the gifts—OK, bribes—of expensive liquors and watches that local cadres used to reel in. So it makes sense that golf, a sport perhaps unfairly associated with the upper classes, would come under pressure from a regime preaching austerity.
In an odd way, Xi’s actions also look like an assertion of the rule of law. China actually banned the construction of new golf courses back in 2004, yet they continued to sprout like weeds. (Local governments often thumb their noses at diktats from Beijing.) So Xi is actually moving to enforce a rule that had already been on the books. Of course, this action is rather inconsistent, given that the dictator, who has amassed more personal power than any Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, has been notably hostile to the rule of law in other spheres.
But perhaps most telling is the target of Xi’s latest drive: Dalian Wanda. That conglomerate has holdings in everything from real estate to entertainment—it’s the world’s largest operator of movie theaters, having gobbled up AMC Cinemas in 2012, and also operates a movie studio. Yet Wanda has recently come under pressure from the Chinese government, which is trying to clamp down on overseas investment, which it blames for depreciation of its currency. Wanda is therefore trying to unload assets under intense political pressure. Beijing has gone after Wanda’s chief, Wang Jianlin personally; rumors have been spreading that he is no longer allowed to leave China. In other words, China’s second-richest man appears to have made an enemy of Xi Jinping—viewed through this lens, the closure of two particular golf courses looks more like a couple of stars in a much larger constellation of political intrigue.
All of this comes as the 19th Party Congress is set to commence in Beijing on Wednesday. There, Xi will be “elected” to another five-year term. Hard times lie ahead for duffers and acquisitive billionaires alike.
