Extra! Extra! China's back-and-forth on golf, still gonna ban dog meat and totally in favor of you criticizing the government

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Photo from Ryan Pyle/Par for China

Apparently, China's in the midst of a "golf boom," despite the percentage of our population who plays the game being negligible - and the fact that course construction has been officially banned since 2004, according to a story written by Shanghaiist founding editor Dan Washburn. Surprisingly, more than 400 new courses have popped up since then. Not so surprisingly, the government doesn't think twice about bulldozing multimillion dollar investments that are illegally built. [Slate]
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority has owned up to its bad RE: forced internment of Chinese immigrants by erecting a memorial to honor them. The chairman of the organization said he was "sorry the early immigrants [...] were denied their civil rights and denied a decent burial" but that he's "glad we're finally honoring them by righting the wrong." Well, half of the wrong, anyway. [The Los Angeles Times]
In a surprising twist, it seems that China may end up the champion in one leg of its green energy marathon against the US: developing a "smart" power grid. China's advantages include a less-developed existing grid which is easier to modify without service interruptions and a strategery - less cute polar bears, more energy security - more aimed at winning the race than public support.[Solve Climate]
Word on the street is that a forcible ban on eating dog and cat meat is still on the table, this time from Guangzhou, where city officials are engineering a facelift in advance of the upcoming Asian games. Specifics are still very similar to those we reported on in our last comment on the matter, but since then, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has weighed in that the matter could take "as long as a decade" to pass nationwide. [CNN]
More than 50 people are missing after a landslide buries more than ten homes in Shaanxi province early this morning. 20 people have so far been rescued from the rubble and out of those still missing, eight have been confirmed dead. [Shanghai Daily]
True or false? Premier Wen Jiabao said that "we must let the people criticize the government and monitor the government, giving full play to the supervisory role of news and public opinion, so that power is exercised in the full light of transparency!” [China Media Project]