It seems that the Chinese government is cracking down on something that is fundamental to Chinese people -- gambling.
Communist China took over Hong Kong after the 99-year lease to Great Britain expired on June 30th, 1997. They also took over the Portuguese colony of Macau in 1999. If you think that Hong Kong was an 'open city', Macau was even more so. Anything went for a price. One of the draws to Macau was the lavish Casinos -- I am not a gambling man but going there and seeing the stage shows and eating the food was pleasure enough in itself.
Now, things are changing -- from The Guardian:
China cracks down in 'Asian Las Vegas'
Chinese authorities have arrested almost 1.2 million people suspected of illegal betting offences during a nine month crackdown, state media reported today.
The arrests were part of a nationwide anti-gambling campaign from January to September in which police seized £166m and investigated 163,000 cases.
The crackdown was aimed mainly at preventing public officials from gambling away public money in Macau, the small special administrative region in southern China that is becoming known as the "Las Vegas of Asia".
More than 8,740 members of the ruling Communist party were punished for gambling between January and October, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
An official at the Communist party's discipline inspection commission was quoted by Xinhua as saying: "Cross-border gambling, especially [on the part of] government officials, could directly undermine [...] national security and social stability and tarnish the party's image."
I would imagine that maintaining a good image is kind of hard when you run a repressive and corrupt non-Democratic regime...
As for Chinese gambling -- I have had the pleasure of visiting China and Hong Kong several times. Gambling is rife there. When Hong Kong was being handed over to the Communists, many people emigrated to Vancouver, BC, about an hour to the north of us. A local Indian Casino is doing a land-office business catering to these people -- there are usually two or more busses at any given time in their parking lot. The busses have Chinese signage - no English, Chinese characters.
