A luxury golf club in suburban Shanghai that charges membership fees as high as 1.46M yuan ($233,400) "was still running on Monday, though it had been exposed as being illegally built and operated for four years," according to Wang Zhenghua of CHINA DAILY. In a report published on Sunday, Xinhua accused Dongzhuang Beach Golf Club in the city's Pudong New Area of cheating authorities by calling itself a "sports park" and ignoring a ban by the central government in '04 from constructing new golf courses. The report also said that government officials and State-owned company execs "are among its members." An employee of the club said, "I don't know about any probe into us just because of the report." She said that the course "was set to close on Wednesday" for the Spring Festival holiday and reopen on Feb. 24. The city's planning and land resource administration bureau said on Monday that "it has noticed the report and begun to deal with the matter." The exposure "comes amid a nationwide clamp down on illegally constructed golf courses to promote environmental protection and regulate the industry" (CHINA DAILY, 2/17).
