Inside Asian Gaming

MArch 2016 inside asian gaming 19 that in policy, the Macau government nearly always gets its way. At the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Professor Sonny Lo traces this difference between Hong Kong and Macau back to the riots that blew up in the two colonies during the mainland’s Cultural Revolution. Britain’s colonial government cracked down on the pro-China groups that made trouble in 1967 and dismantled them. So pro-Beijing elements in the colony’s civil society disappeared until negotiations for the transfer of sovereignty in the 1980s allowed them to re-emerge. During Macau’s riots in 1966, however, Mao Zedong forced the Portuguese territory’s weaker colonial government to climb down in the face of rioting Communist Party supporters, and then repress groups loyal to its opposition, the Kuomintang. “We can say that Macau was from thence on Sinicized, or mainlandized,” says Lo. “While Hong Kong’s executive-legislative relations today are of confrontation, filibustering and continuous disputes, executive-legislative relations in Macau are characterized by relative harmony and smoothness of passage of legislation.” Macau gaming; good or bad for China? Outsiders unfamiliar with Macau’s history and its place as a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic might think it would In Focus be natural for Beijing to be hostile to Macau’s gambling industry. Other Asian countries including Korea, Vietnam and Singapore have banned or placed heavy restrictions on their own citizens from entering the casinos they allow. They want the pros of allowing casinos, in the form of gaming tax and boosted tourism, without the cons of problem gambling, unscrupulous debt collection and other social issues. China has it almost the other way around. Macau’s casinos pay no gaming tax to Beijing and they don’t do a very good job of attracting overseas visitors (less than 10% of visitors to the city come from outside Greater China). While the operators have reaped supernormal profits, nearly all of the problems they create have been Eilo Yu reckons a ban by China on gambling in Macau for government officials has been highly effective. He talks about rumors of China’s anti- corruption police placing Macau’s casinos under surveillance, and even hacking into their customer databases. Whether true or not, he says the fear so instilled would scare civil servants from China well away. Eilo Yu , Associate Professor at the University of Macau.