Ruili River
Golf Course

The setting

A mountain course
in Dehong.

Ruili River Golf Course, also known as Jingcheng Ruili International Golf Club (景成瑞丽国际高尔夫球会), formed part of the Ruili River Ecological Tourism and Leisure Sports Centre. It occupied Guanghehan in Ruili, Dehong, in western Yunnan.[1]

Jingcheng Group began the development in 2009. The wider sports-centre project had a planned investment of more than RMB 200 million and a reported area of 1,287 mu, or about 86 hectares.[1]

The project brought mountain golf to Ruili as part of a larger tourism development, combining local character with a course designed by Nelson & Haworth.[1]

The golf

Eighteen holes.
A mountain setting.

The course had 18 holes and a par of 72. Nelson & Haworth designed the mountain layout at Guanghehan, and Ruili River appeared in the December 2011 directory of China’s new golf courses.[1][2]

Ruili Longyun Jiangxin was a separate nine-hole, par-35 club beside the Ruili River. The two clubs appeared as separate entries in the same directory.[2]

The club in its golfing years

Part of Yunnan’s
golfing community.

Jingcheng Ruili took part in Yunnan’s professional grounds-management training programme in 2011. Staff from the club joined participants from 12 other clubs for the course that began at Kunming Sunshine on 19 November.[5]

The programme ran for three months and covered the skills needed to manage golf-course grounds. It placed Jingcheng Ruili alongside established clubs including Spring City, Kunming Sunshine and Kunming Hot Spring.[5]

Why the golf ended

Unauthorised construction.
Enforced closure.

Ruili River Golf Course closed in 2014. Entry 14 of the local environmental bureau’s July 2022 inspection records that closure year.[7]

A December 2014 report on the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural Development’s scenic-area inspections identified unauthorised golf-course construction within the Ruili River ecological leisure sports centre. The centre and other projects had begun without the required scenic-area review and approval procedures. Authorities ordered the unauthorised works stopped and investigated, with ecological and landscape restoration.[9]

On 30 March 2015, the national authorities listed Ruili River among 66 closed courses. The national clean-up register subsequently recorded enforcement as complete. The Jiegao river-improvement golf project appears separately in both registers.[3][4]

Life after golf

From fairways
to parkland.

The former course became parkland. In September 2018, Jingcheng Group proposed the Ruili Bay Botanical Garden on the former sports-centre land, with tourism, education and leisure as its main uses. Planning was complete and plant transplantation was under way.[6]

On 28 July 2022, environmental inspectors found overgrown surroundings, removed golf-course features and land undergoing natural recovery. They recorded no new golf-course construction, expansion or additional land.[7]

In April 2026, a new improvement scheme was announced for the replacement park. It covers site clearance, landscape planting, lighting, signs and video monitoring, with estimated construction costs of RMB 4 million. Its six-month works period begins once the investment agreement takes effect and commencement conditions are met.[8]

The park improvements continue the site’s life after golf. The 2018 botanical-garden proposal set out an ambition for a 5A attraction; the 2026 notice concerns improvements to the park.