"China has always had a complicated relationship with golf."

Dan Washburn, the man on the ground in China covering the weird golf boom there, notes the recent brouhaha over President Barack Obama's golf and uses it as an opportunity to contrast the American game with the one Chinese politicians are afraid to be seen playing.

Washburn writes:

In fact, so ingrained is golf's image as an elitist pursuit, the Chinese Communist Party has been known to send notices to cadres warning them not to play, lest they be labeled corrupt. Some Western journalists even branded golf "green opium," a dangerous import that Chinese leaders believed to be a gateway to further decadence.

Perhaps now more than ever, thanks to President Xi Jinping's ongoing crackdown on government corruption, golf remains a taboo topic for China's political elite. Put simply, there's no way Chinese officials should be able to afford to play golf in China. Their salaries are modest (last year, it was reported that the annual salary for Xi himself was just $19,000) and, while most Chinese assume that all government officials have other sources of income, regularly playing golf would be a rather conspicuous admission of impropriety.