Inside Asian Gaming
37 In Focus Losing bet And there, with Mr Wang’s comments, comes the essential problem. If you were to speak to associates of Hong Kong businessman Cheng Yun Pung, they would tell you he thought he had been awarded an official licence to run horse races in Beijing back in the autumn of 2005. Toy manufacturer Mr Cheng invested the best part of US$100 million setting up the Beijing Jockey Club in 2001 and establishing an ambitious breeding, training and racing programme. He installed Irishman Kevin Connolly, a former trainer, as his racing director, and the two oversaw considerable growth in the first four years as hundreds of horses were flown in,mostly from Australia, but also Britain and Ireland, and cared for by a staff of over 700. The club covered 1,200 hectares, and comprised three race tracks, 900 stables, a blood-typing laboratory, two swimming pools, four walkers, sand yards and a series of hospitality suites. Then in 2005 the authorities shut it down. More than 600 thoroughbred horses, representing some of the finest blood lines that world racing had to offer, were destroyed by lethal injection. So where does that leave Wuhan’s little experiment? The answer is probably ‘It depends’. It depends for a large part, on who is actually behind it. If it’s a Mainland businessman, or even better, the local branch of Communist Party of China, or China’s State General State Administration of Sport itself (the same body that brought you the Beijing Olympics and which oversees one of China’s two state lotteries) then it may stand a better chance of entering the winners’ enclosure than Mr Cheng’s venture. Another possibility is that the Wuhan experiment is following a triedand tested formatwithinChina.In this scenario,China,ahugeand complex country hard even for a modern state to govern effectively from the centre, is allowed a degree of regional autonomy—until such time as one of those local semi-autonomous administrations rubs up Beijing the wrong way. Officials at the Macau Jockey Club and the Hong Kong Jockey Club will no doubt watch developments with interest.
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