It is already impacting the world golf tourism scene forcefully and it can be only a matter of time until it produces players who will win the major championships.

Michael Hoey and Gareth Maybin will get a first-hand taste of the new golfing China when they represent us in the World Cup at Mission Hills, just north of Hong Kong, on 19-25 November. There they will find no fewer than 12 lovely golf courses designed by big names like Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Pete Dye, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Nick Faldo.

According to the Guinness Book of Records this is the biggest golf club in the world.

There is a 315-room luxury hotel on site, with all the peripherals including 51 tennis courts, and Mission Hills has recently been named 'The Most Favorite Golf Club to Millionaires in China', by Euromoney China.

The World Cup was played there in 1995 and will be back again in 2008. Then, from 2009 through 2018, Mission Hills will host one World Golf Championship event per annum in a bid to really establish itself in the world's golfing mind. One of those events is likely to be the President's Cup as both Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player were pushing for such a choice in Canada last week.

Dr David Chu, who set out to build Mission Hills in 1992, has just been voted one of the 'Most Powerful People in Golf '* alongside men like Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Tim Finchem, Greg Norman, Gary Player and Arnold Palmer. Quite an achievement and honour.

Irish golfers will recognise some similarities with people and events on the home scene when told that Chu holds an honorary doctorate of law from the University of Toronto and that he became one of the first entrepreneurs to invest in mainland China in 1979 and within a decade had built the country's biggest corrugated packaging conglomerate. It seems that there is money in cardboard no matter where it is made.

Chu has been a lifetime golfer since his boyhood days in Hong Kong and he has played a big part in the promotion of sport generally as vice-chairman of the China football association, China tennis association, China volleyball association and as strategic advisor to the 2008 Beijing Olympics Bid Committee. All in all the sort of man who thinks big and makes them happen.

Within a short number of years he and his colleagues will have pushed their country into the rank of major player in world golf tourism and all others, including Ireland, had better watch out.

The full list appears in the current issue of Golf and is the first to include people from outside the USA.