Inside Asian Gaming

IAG MAY 2020年5月 亞博匯 64 Macau’s monopoly operator STDM contributed 47% of all government revenue in 1999. 1999年，澳門的壟斷運營商澳娛貢獻了政府總收入的47％。 COLUMNISTS P erhaps enforced isolation is imbuing me with a distorted sense of time compression, but it seems some gaming industry experts continue to bang on in any forum that will hear them about the embedded weaknesses of Macau’s approach to the regulation of junket operations. Their normative pronouncements about what constitutes good - practice regulation pay little to no regard whatsoever to history, context or relevant public interest. Rather, they would seem to promote the idea that there is a gold standard which implies contextual irrelevance, and that should be pursued irrespective of host jurisdictions’ public interest. Intellectual and cultural imperialism is alive and well. It shouldn’t be. To understand why Macau’s regulatory regime for junkets has evolved as it has, it is necessary to go back to the Portuguese colonial era. Although Portuguese merchants had settled Macau in the mid-16th century, it was not until 1979 that Portugal established formal diplomatic relations with the PRC. Portugal had relinquished control of its other colonies, such as Angola and Mozambique, after the military coup of April 1974, known as the Carnation Revolution. At the time, the PRC declined to take over the administration of Macau, perhaps because it was itself in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. It was not until December 1999 that the handback was completed, some 12 years after the Sino - Portuguese declaration regarding the return of Macau to Chinese administration had been signed. Upon its establishment, the administration of the inaugural Chief Executive, Edmund Ho Hau Wah, found itself on the proverbial horns of a dilemma. First, Macau’s traditional secondary industries of textiles and footwear, boat building, fishing and fireworks were all in decline. Secondly, Articles 104 and 105 of the Basic Law of Macau conferred financial independence on the SAR. This cut two ways; the PRC could not levy taxes or share in the SAR’s revenue streams, but equally, though implicitly, there was no obligation placed upon the PRC