June 17, 1994

CHINESE PUNT ON THE 'SPORT OF COMRADES'

ERIC ELLIS, Guangzhou

THE Guangzhou Jockey Club may not be quite ready for the Chinese Communist Party Invitation Cup, but it has a reasonable claim to host the Socialist Market Economy Improvers Handicap.

Sprawling over a former banana grove on the outskirts of this grimy southern Chinese city, the 18-month-old racecourse plans 80 meetings this season in what party officials delicately describe as an "experiment" with that most capitalist of entertainments, gambling.

"We plan to have a national horse race," says club official Mr Guan Canhui, "and we want it one day soon to be as good as your Melbourne Cup." That China even has a racecourse and officially sanctioned betting might be enough to make Mao turn in his grave. That it is developing three -here, in Beijing and in Shenzhen - suggests Mao's heirs have discarded, if not the pretence, then certainly the baggage of communism.

As with most Chinese activities that break with party orthodoxy, the Guangzhou Jockey Club seeks to explain away any of its apparent contradictions. It does so delightfully, but Runyonesque it is not.

"Racing is the only way to exploit a broad future by facing the society and vitalising various routes persistently," a brochure says.

"As the People's Republic of China wants to catch up its athletic sports with the Olympic Games, an uplift in horsemanship is importunate (sic).

"The uprising of horse racing in Guangzhou reflects its citizens' sense of honour to their history, their responsibility to the race and their aggressive and combatant spirit."

Doubtless the AJC and the VRC share the same goals.

Some serious money changes hands here at the twice-weekly meetings, though it seems local racegoers are also given to punting out of the State's gaze.

Locals say unofficial betting agents have sprung up across the city, pre-empting the club's official goal of computerised betting shops by next year, first in Guangzhou and its surrounding province and, ambitiously, across China.

The quality of the horse flesh is for the moment a lesser consideration.

China lacks an organised bloodstock industry and ships in gallopers from Mongolia, Xinjaing in China's far west, and also could-have-been champions from Australia, usually after several seasons in Hong Kong.

But in socialist China where, ideologically, everybody has the same status, the Guangzhou races uphold at least one tenet of a communist State.

Prize money for every race is the same: 18,000 renminbi (around $3,000) for first place, RMB13,000 for second, and RMB8,000 for third. Not a lot of incentive for China's would-be Bart Cummingses or Robert Sangsters.

"The racing club is the people's organisation," says Mr Guan.

The emergence of a racing industry has inevitably attracted outsiders.

Hong Kong has played a big part in the course's organisation, and Hong Kong's racing press has begun carrying the fields and form of the Guangzhou gallops.

Mr Guan produces a sheaf of happy snaps showing a relaxed Mr Bob Hawke inspecting the facility last September. Local newspapers reported the former Australian prime minister offered to become the first foreigner to race a horse in Guangzhou.

Mr Hawke left his felicitations - "Best Wishes To All Chinese Lovers of Horse Racing" - and toasted the club with a glass of the local brew.

Trackside facilities seem a little rough. There is no bookies' ring, no bed of roses around the "birdcage" - indeed, there is no birdcage - and the modern stand built just last year already looks dated.

But what the track lacks in comforts it more than makes up for in enthusiasm.

Some 40,000 attend the average meeting, punting an average RMB8 million on every race, or RMB200 per person per race - about half the average monthly salary in Guangzhou.

The club returns in winnings 70 to 80 per cent of its takings. The rest, it claims, goes into local infrastructure projects.

As anywhere, members and owners get the privileges, and this includes entertaining contacts at the club's two restaurants, red-carpeted affairs with the ubiquitous XO cognac for patrons to display their success.

"There is a lot of atmosphere here," says Mr Guan, who can only see good times ahead for Chinese racing.

But having put the Boy Emperor Pu Yi to work as a Beijing gardener after they came to power in 1949, it seems China's ruling communist elite are still some way from calling their nascent racing industry "the Sport of Kings".