The President's Daily Brief - PDB Afternoon Bulletin | December 26th, 2025: Inside Xi Jinping’s Bizarre War on Golf

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

In this special edition of the PDB Afternoon Bulletin--We take a step back from the daily headlines to explore one of the strangest political fault lines in modern China: Xi Jinping’s war on the game of golf. We explain how golf became associated with corruption, elite privilege, and unwanted Western influence inside the Chinese Communist Party—and why Party officials learned to treat it as politically radioactive. We trace the story from Mao Zedong’s condemnation of the sport, through China’s underground golf boom, to Xi’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign that turned golf clubs into targets. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President’s Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Birch Gold: Text PDB to 989898 and get your free info kit on gold Stash Financial: Don't Let your money sit around. Go to https://get.stash.com/PDB to see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Looking to diversify and protect your hard-earned assets, well, schedule a free consultation with the Birch Gold Group. They're the precious metals specialists. Just text PDB to the number 989-898, and you'll receive a free, no-obligation information kit, and you'll learn how to convert an existing IRA or a 401k into a gold IRA. Again, text PDB to 989-89-89. Welcome to a special edition of the PDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage.

And, of course, I hope that all have had a very happy and peaceful Christmas, and we wish all of our UK friends a very happy boxing day. All right, let's get briefed. Today we're stepping back from the daily headlines to look at something a little different. Now, bear with me, it is a little different. It's a story that says a lot about politics and power in the nation of China. I'm talking, of course, about the game of golf. This is more about the intersection of a sport, in this case golf, and interstate. international affairs, diplomacy, and politics. For world leaders and politicians, golf, of course,

has always been more than a sport. It's also a diplomatic tool. It's a place where conversations move more freely than they do around a conference table. And that's especially true for U.S. President Donald Trump. During his first term, one of the clearest examples of that was his relationship with former Japanese Prime Minister Shenzhou Abe. Just weeks after taking office, Trump invited Abe to Florida for a weekend of golf. of Moralago and his private course in Jupiter. It wasn't just a friendly outing. It became a cornerstone of Trump's personal style of statecraft, where informal settings and genuine rapport often mattered more than protocol, and it worked. Abe, also an avid golfer, used that time to build a friendship

that helped steady the U.S.-Japan alliance during a period of real uncertainty. Now, that got us thinking over here at the BDB. That's what we do. We sit around and we pop. hundred big things, if golf diplomacy was that effective with Japan, why not try it with China's Xi Jinping? Why not use the same setting, the same relaxed personal style to ease tensions between the world's two biggest powers? Well, we dug into it, thinking that perhaps we were about to create a blueprint for world peace, but what we found was a lot more interesting than we expected, and it has nothing to do with Xi's handicap. Because in Xi Jinping's China, golf, isn't just a game. Under Xi Jinping, Gulf is entangled with political symbolism, tied to corruption,

elite privilege, and unwanted Western influence. It's an activity that the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, views as all that is wrong with the West. And Xi's government hasn't just distanced itself from golf. It's actively waged a campaign against it, a campaign that tells us a lot about corruption, control and why so-called golf diplomacy with Xi is basically impossible. So let's dig into how the sport became one of the strangest political fault lines in China. To understand why Xi Jinping treats golf like a political hazard, you have to go back, well, long before Xi, long before modern China's economic boom, all the way back to Mao Zedong. Because golf didn't just fall out of favor in communist China, it was condemned. After the communist revolution in 1949,

The party drew sharp lines between what belonged to the people and what belonged to the old elites. Golf was placed firmly in the latter category. Mao saw it as a symbol of wealth, privilege, and Western decadence, everything the new China was supposed to reject. He reportedly called it a, quote, sport for millionaires. Most of China's existing golf courses were shut down. Some were plowed under and turned into farmland. Others were converted into public parks or factories or military training grounds.

For decades, the game essentially vanished from Chinese public life. Golf didn't just die out. It became politically toxic. Then came Den Xiaoping in the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. Markets opened, foreign investors came in, wealth grew, and quietly, almost in the shadows, golf returned. The first modern course opened in 1984 near Hong Kong, then another and another. And by the early 2000s, China was in the middle of a golf explosion.

one that technically wasn't supposed to be happening. In 2004, Beijing issued a nationwide moratorium on building additional golf courses. Officially, it was about land use and water conservation, but in reality, it was also about the party's discomfort with the sport increasingly associated with the rich, the powerful, and the politically connected. Local officials ignored the ban almost immediately. Courses were built anyway, hundreds of them, disguised as eco-parks or sports centers or scenic zones. Developers carved fairways out of farmland and wetlands and protected land,

often with the quiet approval of officials who had bad business interests in the projects. Golf wasn't just back, it was booming, and that quickly became a problem. The boom revealed a growing class of elites who lived very differently from the average Chinese citizen. By the late 2000s, golf and China carried two very different meanings. To the wealthy and well-connected, it was a status symbol, a place to network privately away from party oversight. To the CCP, especially its more ideological members, it looked like a return of the very class divide that the revolution and Mao worked to erase.

And then along came Xi Jinping. When Xi launched his sweeping anti-corruption campaign, he wasn't just targeting individual officials, he was targeting the appearance of privilege, the optics, the behaviors that suggested Chinese elites were drifting toward the same indulgences, as the West. Gulf landed right in the middle of that campaign. It was a deliberate move to reclaim political control over a space the party feared it was losing. By the time Xi Jinping came to power in

2012, Gulf and China had become something the Communist Party could no longer ignore. It wasn't just a sport. It was a meeting place for businessmen and bureaucrats and party officials. Deals were made there, favors exchanged, memberships gifted, and almost all of it happened out of public view. She launched one of the most sweeping anti-corruption campaigns in modern Chinese history. It targeted what he called, quote, tigers and flies, senior officials and low-level cadre alike. Millions have been investigated or disciplined since that campaign began, with punishments, ranging from demotions to expulsions and prison terms. And as strange as it sounds, Gulf became one of the indicators of corruption.

And you ask yourself, why? Well, that's a good question to ask, because she's investigators weren't just looking for bribes slipped in envelopes. They were looking for patterns of behavior, the quiet signals of privilege that suggested an official was living beyond his means or cultivating inappropriate relationships. Golf fit that profile perfectly. It was expensive, it's exclusive, and it was a place where favors could be exchanged without leaving a paper trail. In 2015, the Communist Party made it official. Party members were banned from joining golf clubs or accepting golf-related perks. It was grouped together with other, quote, undesirable lifestyles, like lavish banquets and luxury travel,

all signs, in she's view, of a political class drifting away from the people. Party-controlled media amplified that message. They described golf clubs as arenas of corruption, well, something's never changed, places where networking turned into influence peddling and discounted memberships functioned as bribes. Some officials were investigated specifically for their time on the course. Others were punished for accepting memberships worth tens of thousands of dollars. In extreme cases, officials lost their party posts entirely. This wasn't a crackdown on sports, it was a crackdown on optics and on the idea that Chinese leaders might be living like Western elites. And it didn't stop

with targeting officials, she's government turned its attention to the golf courses as well. Between 2014 and 2017, Beijing ordered more than 100 courses across the country closed. Others were forced to return illegally accessed land or halt expansion plans. The official explanations varied, misuse of farmland, environmental violations, improper permits, but the broader message was unmistakable. The party was taking back control. Local governments that once quietly supported golf development were reminded forcefully of who sets national priorities. In 2016, party regulators offered a small clarification. The sport itself wasn't banned. Officials could play golf again, as long as as they paid their own way and avoided accepting gifts or memberships. On paper, it was a softening.

In reality, the stigma remained. All right, after the break, how golf became a political liability for China's elites and why staying off the course became the safest move of all. We'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here. As the New Year approaches, let me take just a moment to talk about your financial goals. That's obviously very important. Now, because of a great company out there that's called Stash, that's S-T-A-S-H, just like it sounds, Stash, you don't need to overhaul your life just to start investing. You just automate it. With Stash, your New Year money goals can quietly run in the background while you focus on

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Small talk's going nowhere, but then the Bose speed. speaker kicks in. Music you can feel fills the room and no more chat with Danny from accounts. Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at bows.com. Welcome back to this special edition of the PDB afternoon bulletin. Now, if you were a Chinese official looking to stay out of trouble, the safest move was simple. Stay away from the golf course. Don't be photographed near one. Don't post about it. Don't even appear to enjoy it. Golf would become politically radioactive, a shorthand inside China for privilege, corruption, and Western excess. And that's the heart of Xi's campaign. It's not that he hates golf. It's that he distrust what

happens when elites gather away from party oversight. Golf offered private conversations, loose networks, and informal influence, all things that Xi's centralized system is built to eliminate. The crackdown wasn't cultural, it was political. And it's the reason why Gulf diplomacy with Xi Jinping is impossible. The optics alone would undermine a decade of messaging about party discipline and anti-corruption. So after all this, we return to the question we started with. If golf diplomacy, as an example, help stabilize the U.S.-Japan alliance, if it created a genuine bond between Trump and Shenzhouabe, why not try the same thing with China's Xi Jinping? Well, I think we've seen why. Why not settle global tensions somewhere between the fairway and the putting grain? Or, in my case, somewhere between

the sand trap and the next sand trap? Well, it is clear. Golf represents everything that Xi Jinping is trying to control and everything he doesn't want to be seen embracing. Trump's style of diplomacy is intensely personal. He favors informal settings, unstructured conversations, and the kind of easy back and forth that can happen on a golf course. He believes relationships matter, and he uses the course to build them. She's approach could not be more different. His political power is built on discipline, hierarchy, and controlled environments. Meetings are scripted, optics are tightly managed, and the leader of the world's largest authoritarian state does not put himself in settings that appear casual or uncontrolled.

A golf course, wide open, leisurely, unpredictable, is the opposite of how Xi conducts diplomacy. Even if she wanted to play golf with the U.S. President, and of course there's no indication that he does, the optics inside China would be disastrous. For a decade, Xi has tied himself to an image of austerity, rectitude, and ideological purity. He's warned relentlessly about the dangers of Western luxury and elite indulgence. He's punished officials for playing golf. He's shut down courses that grew too fast, and he built a political brand on being above all of that. If images emerged of Xi strolling down a Florida fairway with Donald Trump, maybe with a cigar and a coarsed light in his hand, every message he sent about corruption, indulgence, and party discipline would collapse.

I have no idea if she drinks coarse light. I just threw that out there. For the Chinese public, and especially for party members, that photo op would not say diplomacy. It would say hypocrisy. And in the Chinese political system, hypocrisy is a vulnerability. There's something else at work here, too, a cultural and political difference in how each country understands power. In the U.S., a president playing golf signals normalcy. confidence, even approachability. In China, a leader playing golf signals distance from the people,

closeness to elites, and immersion in a world that the Communist Party has spent decades condemning. And that brings us to the larger point. The U.S. and China don't just disagree about policy. They operate with fundamentally different understandings of leadership, optics, and legitimacy. Trump uses personal diplomacy. She uses institutional control. Trump sees the golf course as a place to build trust. She sees it as a threat to the party's image. And that difference highlights the broader challenge in the U.S.-China relationship. Washington seeks connection. Beijing seeks control. And that, my friends, is our special edition of the president's daily brief for Friday, the 26th of December. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at BDB at thefirsttv.com.

Of course, to listen to the show ad-free, you can do that, and it's really very simple. Just become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief by visiting PDB Premium.com. And, of course, seeing that it's Friday, it is Friday, we'll be launching another episode of our much-loved extended weekend show, the PDB Situation Report this evening at 10 p.m. On the first TV. And as always, you can catch it on our YouTube channel. That's also much-loved. Just go to YouTube and search for at President's Daily Brief.

And, of course, it's also on podcast platforms everywhere. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back over the weekend with the BDB Situation Report. Until then, stay informed. Stay safe. Stay cool. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

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