The PR geniuses at Peking University, one of the country’s most prestigious seats of learning, are at it again.  Just weeks after announcing their intention to keep out the riff-raff by banning tour groups, last week it was revealed that they were planning to build a golf course slap bang in the middle of the campus. Accused of elitism and wasting both financial and environmental resources, they came out swinging , claiming that they are only going to build a teeny tiny driving range.  Less a golf course and  "more like a cage for students", said PU’s PE Director Hao Guangan.  (Well, ok, what he actually said was "more like a cage for students to practice their swing") 

Nevertheless, that Peking University has decided to add golf to its syllabus is both surprising and revealing.  Golf has yet to capture the public imagination in China.  It’s commonly referred to derisively as "the rich man’s game", the sport of the elite and the spoiled few.  Earlier this year, the Chinese golfing enthusiasts made a brave, if foolhardy, appeal to patriotism in an attempt to stoke up public interest in the game, claiming that golf had been invented in China several centuries before the Scots thought of it.  But public apathy (and very very flimsy supporting evidence for the audacious claim) undermined their efforts. 

In China, golf remains a cult sport, at best.  Courses are few and far between, and with arable and residential land at a premium in China, the government actively discourage their construction.  Regardless, even if you found one you could never afford the green fees or membership.  China is one of the few countries where Tiger Woods could walk around unnoticed on the streets of most towns. 

Yet, despite this, Peking University has decided that its students need to spend their time honing their driving skills.  When the range is completed, students will apparently be offered golf classes as part of their PE syllabus.  It’s not yet known whether the classes will be compulsory.

The question everybody has been asking is why PU felt it necesssary to offer classes for golf, a sport that his not at all popular.  One reason this story got so much attention is because Peking University’s staff and students have long been accused of having ideas above their station.  That they had decided to descend from their ivory towers and  take up their 3-woods for a few rounds of the rich man’s game was seen by many as yet another sign that the folks at PU had lost touch with reality.

But in fact, rather than symbolising Peking University’s overinflated self-importance, this story may actually illustrate the extent to which the school and its leaders are racked with insecurities and starting to panic.  PU has been noticeably slipping in public esteem in recent years, and this golfing fad may be part of its attempt to claw back some of the cred and prestige it has been haemorraging. 

There was a time when Peking University, and its elite counterparts Qinghua and Fudan, were guaranteed to attract the absolute best of the country’s student population.  They feared competition from none bar the US Ivy League schools.  In recent years, however, it has become increasingly obvious that China’s top colleges are losing their lustre.  The standard of education in general on the mainland has failed to keep pace with the country’s economic development.  A survey last year by the McKinley group found that only 10 % of graduates from Chinese universities were fit to work in foreign companies. 

With that in mind, students have been taking their business elsewhere, many of them only as far as Hong Kong where they the more international style of education will improve their chances of finding a job on graduation.  30,000 of the nation’s brightest students applied to universities in Hong Kong this year, with only just over 1,000 places up for grabs, a huge increase on applications in 2005.  The reasons for this are plain.  99% of graduates from Hong Kong’s top universities found work on graduation.  At Chinese universities, even the very best ones, that figure stands at around 85% at best.  

Faced with this new threat, universities on the mainland have been scrambling to rebrand themselves and present a new, dynamic public face.  For Peking university this doesn’t just involve building cages for students (to practice their swing). As part of its image overhaul it has also announced that it will change its English name, ditching the quaintly old-fashioned Wade-Giles spelling of Peking, and adopting the fashionable "of" style.  From next year, it will become known as the University of Beijing.