Inside Asian Gaming

IAG AUG 2022年8月 亞博匯 44 MACAUKILLERNUMBER 2: CHINA’S POSTURE TOWARD MACAU Despite all the doom and gloom, if it were only COVID that was killing Macau, it would not be right to dethrone the SAR as the king of the casino gaming universe, as it would be reasonable to assume Macau would bounce back post-COVID, just as Las Vegas and many other jurisdictions have done. But there is a second group of factors – currently somewhat masked by the presence of COVID – that will continue to strangle Macau long after COVID is done and dusted. These other factors stem from the fact that mainland China has great antipathy towards the city’s core activity of casino gambling. Casino gambling is illegal throughout the mainland and disparaged there as a scourge on society. It is begrudgingly tolerated in Macau by the PRC only because of its historical context – dating back to the mid-19th century as a legal activity and for centuries more as a major de facto cultural characteristic of Macau. As well as being fuelled by ideology (and remember, ideology always trumps commercial considerations in mainland China), this antipathy is further driven by a number of past and present Macau peculiarities surely despised by the PRC. It is well known the Macau casino industry was used by wealthy Chinese, particularly in the 2010s and primarily through junkets, as a major COVER STORY