Inside Asian Gaming

IAG APR 2023年4月 亞博匯 22 COVER STORY A lmost three months since China shocked the world by declaring it would remove almost all remaining COVID-19 border restrictions from 8 January 2023, the scramble to make sense of Macau’s recovery trajectory remains as strong as ever. It’s fair enough to say that few saw China’s change of heart – and certainly the speed with which it arrived – coming. As recently as October, President Xi Jinping was doubling down on his strict COVID-19 policy, telling colleagues at the Communist Party Congress that the policy represented a “peoples’ war to stop the spread of the virus.” But come December, public and economic pressures saw China – and by default Macau – begin rolling back mandatory quarantine measures for infected locals before dumping most remaining quarantine and testing requirements for foreign arrivals from early January. For Macau’s long-suffering gaming and tourism industries,