"The primary motivation behind developing the game of golf in China is property, not bashing a little white ball around a course."

Clifford Coonan files a perspective on golf-in-China for The Independent. It's hard to read this and wonder how anyone could possibly think this is going to turn out well.

There is another dimension to this picture of serene golfing pleasure. The development of the game is tightly allied to the social changes in China over the past three decades. As with so much else in the New China, this golf revolution is built on cold, hard cash. The primary motivation behind developing the game of golf in China is property, not bashing a little white ball around a course. Plush villas pay the green fees.

"What make money in most clubs are the villas and apartments ringing the courses. The golf itself is a loss leader, and many of the courses in China are chronically underutilised," said a golfer at another club – on condition of anonymity: he doesn't want problems with his membership.

In extreme cases, developers buy up large tracts of farmland on the outskirts of the boom towns of New China: Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Tianjin, Beijing and Shanghai. They then start building flashy villas – reasonably priced by UK standards but more than most Chinese families would earn in a lifetime. The courses are often an afterthought, hastily-constructed – even unplayable. The developers don't care; they can charge a lot more for property near a course.

Sometimes this land is taken illegally with the connivance of corrupt local officials, leading to social unrest as disenfranchised farmers take to the streets and demonstrate, attacking building sites and picketing government offices. China's arable land is scarce, and the government is worried about a growing wealth gap between the rich of the cities and the poor in the countryside.

There have also been efforts to clamp down on Communist Party cadres doing business on golf courses. The central government has put a ban on the construction of new courses for fear of a potentially-destabilising backlash, and ultimately the development of golf in China is largely dependent on what the Beijing government does.

But the ruling doesn't mean an end to the construction of golf courses in China. Many courses are listed as part of the facilities for a luxury villa development or as country clubs to get around the ban. Most people believe the government is more concerned about stopping course development turning into another bubble, and the slowing of growth is aimed at cooling the market.

Where could the government have gotten that idea?