An unlikely contender for a pioneering role in Chinese sustainable tourism development has stepped up, proving that major players can also go green. While his father was arguably the man who brought golf to China, Mission Hills Ken Chu is the mastermind behind a plan to introduce sustainable tourism to the world’s most populous country.

One of the only things more impressive than China’s 1.38 billion population is the incredible emergence and growth of the Chinese middle class, which last October surged past the United States to become the biggest in the world — 109 million people possessing wealth between $US50,000 and $500,000. This leap in disposable income has been coupled with a corresponding increase in appetite for local and international tourism, one that is only set to grow, despite the decline in China’s GDP.

It is one of the first resort operators to ban shark fin in its restaurants, a renewable energy adopter for street lighting and solar-powered golf carts.

Against this backdrop, Mission Hills China — the sports and leisure powerhouse headed by Ken Chu — was named winner of the ‘Earth Changers’ category of the National Geographic Traveler World Legacy Awards at the ITB Berlin travel convention in March of this year.

What started as an integrated leisure resort company in 1992 has grown into the world’s largest golf club: Mission Hills Shenzhen. Since then, the company has led the charge in China’s rapid golf growth, and in 2010 opened Mission Hills Haikou, a massive, 10-course resort on volcanic Hainan Island.

Dozens of golf courses have been shut by the Chinese central government since 2015, due to their resource consumption in the face of a scarcity of water supplies and arable land. In contrast, Mission Hills builds on wasteland.

It is one of the first resort operators to ban shark fin in its restaurants, a renewable energy adopter for street lighting and solar-powered golf carts, and an advocate for the protection of natural and cultural heritage. Joe Dodgshun spoke to Ken Chu about how golf could become a leading light for sustainable tourism in China.

Some people might not associate golf resorts with the idea of sustainable tourism. What made Mission Hills want to be more than just a standard resort operator?

Sustainable tourism and environmental practices are still new concepts in China today, even though we have the world’s largest population and fastest growing middle class. Given the scale, it is our vision to set examples of sustainable best practices, especially in China, which does not have a history of sustainable practices. Our ‘golf and more’ leisure philosophy acts as the catalyst for the group’s sustainable tourism-related business expansion.

Mission Hills helped bring golf to China a few decades ago and the sport has boomed in popularity since. Whom are the golf resorts designed for?

In China, golf is a business language and a business network where you engage partners on the course for at least four hours. Mission Hills is diversifying the golf environment into a destination that is easily accessible, affordable and acceptable for all. With the introduction of many resort options and services at the complex, Mission Hills has become a fully-integrated destination where four generations can enjoy a memorable holiday together.

But is golf actually a sport for everyone, or more of an activity for the elites?

Some people still believe golf is an expensive game to play. In China, it is. That’s because 99% of the courses in China are membership based. And it will take time to change this. Golf has only been around in China for maybe 30 years now; it’s still in its infancy. In Scotland and the US, golf used to be a rich man’s game too. It took around a century to evolve. In China it won’t take a century for it to become more of a layman’s game because of the pace we’re growing at. It will become a more accessible game going forward.

The company has restored industrial wasteland and created wildlife protected areas in the process of building its resorts — can you explain a little about how this works?

We always take sustainability into consideration during the construction period. After all the initial greening and rehabilitation work to restore degraded industrial lands has been completed, we continue to improve our woodland habitats by planting hundreds of trees every year. In Mission Hills Hainan we added soil on top of bare rock and sand to provide optimal living conditions for trees and to allow the natural recolonisation of vegetation, retained twenty thousand existing trees, and planted another thirty thousand trees all as part of our nature restoration efforts. Mission Hills Shenzhen has also planted 280,000 square metres of trees with over 100 indigenous species.