The number of foreign casinos near China's borders dropped from
149 in 2005 to 28 last year as the country made it hard for people
to slip abroad to gamble as part of its anti-gambling campaign.
The police have taken a range of measures including heavier
punishments, closing agencies of foreign casinos in China and
busting underground "banks" that helped transfer money for overseas
gambling, according to the Ministry of Public Security
yesterday.
The ministry worked with local police in border areas in Yunnan, Guangxi, Heilongjiang and Jilin to carry out surveillance of the
operation, guests and gambling activities of nearby casinos, said
an official with the ministry.
He gave an example of a major case cracked in China's southern
boomtown Shenzhen. Local police closed five online agencies and 110
gambling websites operated by foreign casinos, which forced two
overseas casinos to shut down.
According to the ministry, some casinos in neighboring countries
were opened especially to entertain Chinese gamblers.
China's police busted a total of 347,000 gambling cases
involving 1.099 million people last year and retrieved 3.56 billion
yuan (US$456.6 million) of betting money, according to official
statistics.
Earlier reports estimated that a total of 600 billion yuan
(US$76.9 billion) had been wagered overseas by last July. This is
15 times more than is spent each year on China's state-run lottery
and equal to the annual revenue of the country's tourism
industry.
(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2007)