Growth of Surfing in China: At What Cost?

Friday, February 24th, 2012

 The new permanent judging structure erected in Hainan. Photo: Clifton Evers

Surfing corporations and governing bodies see China as a huge new market and potential audience.

Former Association of Surfing Professionals CEO Brodie Carr claimed that, “China is a powerful athletic country, a vast country and marketplace with a potential billion-strong audience for us.” Given declining surf product sales in the west, surfing organisation’s eyes have turned to the emerging middle-class and new rich in China. Surfing competitions have recently been held on Hainan Island in the South China Sea.

I went to Riyuewan Bay, Hainan Island – where the contests are being held – following the latest round of contests. As an expat surfer living in China, I have been to Hainan four times, three times prior to any competitions. My observations have led to have some concerns and suggestions I would like to express to the broader surfing community.
The Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) and International Surfing Association (ISA) have run the Swatch Women’s World Longboarding Championship and the Hainan Wanning Riyuewan Bay International Surfing Festival Presented by Quiksilver, which is made up of the International Surfing Association’s (ISA) China Cup and the Association of Surfing Professionals’ (ASP) World Qualifying Series Hainan Cup.

President of the ISA, Fernando Aquerre, has said “Without a doubt I can say that China has made a grand entrance into the surfing family.”
When professional surfer Cori Schumacher boycotted the 2011 Women’s longboard championship in China on human rights grounds, then ASP CEO Brodie Carr contacted her and suggested that Cori “proactively go there as an ambassador of a sport that possesses the unparalleled ability to empower people.”
So what is this “grand entrance” and “unparalleled ability to empower people” looking like on the ground at Riyuewan Bay?

One of the most significant effects of the contests I noticed has been the building of a permanent contest site. The contest site includes large sheds, media centre, competitor hang out area, and judging building. A large bitumen car park has also been built. The natural shoreline has become a built environment. These facilities are only used during the contests.
A local restaurant owned by ‘Mama’ has been torn down, and her land reclaimed by the government – a common practice in China when government officials can see money being made and want a grab at it themselves. Mama was compensated. However, she lost that income stream. Mama now runs a small drink stand in a new ‘surf club’ (owned by a businessman/government official) built on the site of her old place.

The warehouse-style surf club houses a large new restaurant and the ‘Surfing Hainan’ surf shop. One of the local surfers is now part owner of the restaurant. That could be seen as a benefit stemming from the development borne of the surfing competitions. However, the restaurant is doing poorly. Outside the contest periods there are not enough customers to support such a large restaurant facility. The poor going of the restaurant has caused friction between the co-owners, and the restaurant is looking like closing down after only one month of business.
This transformation of natural environment into a built environment and small businesses into large commercial enterprises is consistent with the growth of Hainan Island in general. A new resort and condominium complex seemingly opens each week. New highways cut across paddy fields. Private beaches have been established. Golf courses cover huge swaths of land. The goal in the government brochures is to make Hainan the “New Waikiki”.

Many surfers would not appreciate the model of development being pursued.
Further to changing the natural environment into a built environment, another environmental effect of the competitions has been trash from the competitions ending up on the headland. Piles of garbage have been dumped a few metres into the vegetation. Every company and organisation involved in the competitions had a responsibility to make sure this didn’t happen, and to check afterwards that it didn’t. This environmental vandalism is barely a blip on the radar of the environmental destruction taking place because of over-development on Hainan (and industrial waste and construction in China, more broadly). Yet, it doesn’t cry out “sustainable development” either.
Surfing companies, organisations and competitors had (and still have) the chance to show how the environment can be managed to benefit tourism, rather than be destroyed because of it, as tends to be the case in China. To date, they haven’t done enough.

The lineup in Hainan. Photo: Evers

In addition to the environmental concerns, it appears that insufficient effort has been made to make sure benefits flow directly into the local community and the development of a grass-roots surfing culture.
A lot of money was sourced to pay for the meetings, trips by Chinese government officials to Australia, buildings, competition running costs, publicity, car park, etc. Money has been sourced from the local Government and the Chinese Central Government, as well as corporate sponsors. As tends to be the case in China, quotes for services tend to be over-priced and the excess government money ends up in a few wealthy individual’s pockets. These businessmen tend to be the ones who have government connections (some successful businessmen also tend to be part of the government). This is common practice in China.

I am not saying the surfing organisations can avoid this way of doing business in China. My point is more about how the local people received no direct benefits despite the spending of government funds drawn from their taxes.
A way to address this failure to provide direct benefits to the local community could be calls for increased accountability. This will help ensure that as many benefits as possible can directly reach the local community. This demand can be driven by the surfing organisations. A bit of pressure from outsiders has been known to work. It won’t change things entirely, but some gains or concessions are possible.
Very few locals were employed for the contests. Event management and other staffing requirements were primarily supplied by non-local companies and businesses, some from as far away as Beijing. It can be argued that the locals do not have the necessary skills to work at these contests. However, it can be countered that these contests would have provided valuable training and experience for those wishing to learn, and so in future be able to have the contests driven and controlled by the local community.

Locals told me that no money has gone into helping develop a grass-roots local surfing community. The young people of the area cannot afford surfboards. Most cannot swim. No surfboards were donated or left behind for the young people to use. No swimming lessons paid for. No money was invested in a community-driven surfing collective whereby young people could come to learn ocean safety, hang out, learn how to surf, learn about how to care for their local coastal environment, get to ride a surfboard, etc.

ISA president, Fernando Aquerre, said about the ISA move into China, “Bringing it [surfing] to 1.3 billion that barely know surfing is part of our mission. Surfing is good for the world.”
However, surfing is not inherently “good.”  Any benefits from surfing must be worked on and developed. Planned and thoughtful action and decisions have to be taken in conjunction with surfing. Reason works better than blind faith.
For surfing communities to grow and be sustainable they must be grass-roots to begin with. Thinking that the emerging Chinese middle-class will see a contest or two and suddenly have the interest, money and leisure time to take up surfing is misguided.

The majority of the “new rich” in China exist in cities far away from “beach culture.” Young people are still encouraged to put leisure last, and education and work at the forefront. They are, after all, the first generation with such wealth, consumption ability and even a modicum of leisure time. Mind you, the vast majority of the Chinese population are far from being middle-class. The fact is, young Chinese of whatever class still have considerable family responsibilities that militate against hanging at the beach and surfing. Also, the single child policy ensures great concern over children’s activities, particularly if they are to be the future of the family. If any activity is viewed as even remotely dangerous children are steered away from it.

“Beach culture,” as those in the West know it, is still very foreign to many Chinese, and even if they do know about beach culture it is a distant dream. Surfing is still an exotic curiosity, and will remain so for a long time. Evidence for this is that there were only a small number of spectators at the contests. Spectator numbers were at their highest when they were bussed in by the government, including school children.
If the surfing organisations and the governments really want to sustainably develop surfing in China then barging in with surfing competitions is not going to cut it. They have to invest in building a grassroots surfing community.

Acknowledgment: I would like to thank Cori Schumacher for her discussions with me about the matters in this article. You can read some of Cori’s opinions about China and surfing