China wins big in crackdown on border casinos

Beijing, Apr 17: China has forced more than 100 casinos operating just over its borders to shut down in the last two years as part of an intensified crackdown on gambling, a state newspaper said today.

There were 149 casinos, most illegal, in 2005, but that had dropped to just 28 now, the official China Daily said, citing the Ministry of Public Security.

Those 28 were in Myanmar, Vietnam and Russia, it said.

''We expect the number will continue to drop this year,'' it quoted Zhang Jun, from the ministry's anti-gambling team, as saying, attributing the fall to better cooperation with neighbouring countries. He did not elaborate.

In previous campaigns, China has cut off supplies of power and water to the casinos and blocked connecting phone lines. The southwestern province of Yunnan has surplus power capacity that it sells to Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos.

The Communist Party outlawed gambling, prostitution and drugs after it rose to power in 1949, but all three have made a comeback as state controls are loosened and getting rich trumps Marxist maxims.

The government is worried about Chinese, especially its own employees, sneaking out of the country into lawless border region such as in the former Burma to gamble.

''It is believed that such casinos have become prime avenues for capital flight as players gamble away embezzled government funds or illegal business earnings,'' the newspaper said.

Some of the casinos had been forced to shut after they were banned from admitting Chinese citizens, the report added.

''Despite the crackdown, experts worry that many border casinos have gone underground, and might resurface as soon as vigilance is eased,'' it said.

While illegal, gambling remains a way of life for many Chinese, who bet on football matches, mahjong games, horse races and cock or cricket fights.

Gambling is especially prevalent and legal in tiny Macau, where casinos have boomed since the island returned from Portuguese to Chinese rule in 1999.

Two years later, the mayor of a northeastern city was handed a suspended death sentence and a vice-mayor executed for gambling away millions of dollars of public funds in Macau.

Reuters