HONG KONG - When the Venetian Macau, the
world's largest casino, opened its doors last
week, Macau completed its transformation from
colonial backwater to the Las Vegas of Asia. And,
going strictly by the numbers, that transformation
has been a winning bet.
In the space of
five years, thanks to its booming gambling
industry, Macau has overtaken the Las Vegas Strip
as the richest gambling market on the planet.
Consequently, the city's economy is surging, with
per capita gross domestic product (GDP)
surpassing neighboring Hong
Kong's last year.
Despite the slick new
casinos and bulging city coffers, however, Macau
is in trouble. The singular focus on turning the
city into a gambling capital has skewed the
economy, draining the labor pool and undermining
other industries. With the highest-paying jobs now
available in casinos, a rising number of youth are
dropping out of school to grab them, and there is
also growing unrest among locals over the cheap
foreign labor that has been imported to support
the casino boom. Moreover, corruption has raised
its ugly head.
The Venetian colossus has
been jokingly called "the casino that ate Macau"
by William Weidner, president of Las Vegas Sands
Corp, which built the mega-resort. For critics of
Macau's single-minded growth strategy, Weidner's
joke stands as a dark metaphor for the decline of
other sectors of the economy in favor of gambling
and for the social ills that have accompanied that
decline.
For the moment, however, those
voices are a cry in the wilderness of Macau
politics, drowned out by the hype and hoopla
surrounding the opening of the Venetian. After
all, it's hard not to be impressed by the sheer
scale of the US$2.4 billion gamblers' paradise.
Until the Venetian opened it doors on August 28,
the $240 million Sands Macau casino resort, which
debuted in 2004, had set the standard for
opulence.
Ten times the size of the Sands,
the 32-story Venetian boasts 850 gaming tables,
4,100 slot machines and 3,000 hotel suites - which
in a single day accounted for a 65% increase in
five-star hotel rooms on offer in the city. Add to
that a 93,000-square-meter shopping plaza for 350
different retailers and a sports stadium that
seats 15,000, not to mention 111,000 square meters
of convention space.
In an attempt to
re-create the charm and elegance of Venice, the
resort will employ natty gondoliers to transport
guests down canals that course through the largest
single building in Asia. Indeed, the only building
in the world larger than the Venetian was built to
hold airplanes - the Boeing plant in Everett,
Washington.
The Venetian will carry a
payroll of about 15,000 employees, roughly 5% of
the labor force in Macau, a city 60 kilometers
southwest of Hong Kong with a population of
526,000 and a total land mass of about 16 square
kilometers, 40% of which has been reclaimed from
sea. A sleepy Portuguese colony for 442 years,
Macau reverted to Chinese rule in 1999.
Macau officials hope the Venetian will not
only attract the growing number of high-rollers on
the mainland - where the economy continues its
nearly 30-year miracle of high growth while
gambling remains taboo - but also lead to a more
diversified economy, enticing to shoppers and
conventioneers. Ultimately, the city hopes to
rival Hong Kong as a convention and entertainment
hub.
When the Venetian opened, however,
with 3,000 people lined up at its doors in
anticipation of the event, the main theme was
clear. The opening date - August 28, or 8/28 - was
auspicious, as those are lucky numbers that
signify "easy riches" in Chinese. And the casino
opened at precisely 7:18pm. That's 19:18 on the
24-hour clock, which adds the number 9, which
means "eternal", to all the good luck and riches
already promised.
Numerology may have
taken center stage, but the resort, which is
perched on the reclaimed Cotai Strip, also staged
an entertainment extravaganza that featured famous
pop singers from Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as
the Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil and American
pop diva Diana Ross. By all accounts, the opening
was a smashing - and, of course, fulsome -
success.
That success is just the latest
and most lavish addition to Macau's gambling
culture since the city liberalized its gaming
market in 2002 and invited moguls from Las Vegas,
Nevada, to compete with Stanley Ho Hung-sun, the
85-year-old Hong Kong-born billionaire who had
monopolized the industry for the previous four
decades. Now Macau's 26 casinos are generating
more revenue than the 38 resorts on the Las Vegas
Strip.
Casino revenue in the second
quarter of this year grew 48.9% year on year, to
more than $2.4 billion. That came on top of
first-quarter growth of 43.5%. As a result of the
gambling boom, huge construction projects have
pushed investment up 44.4% in the second quarter.
The good times should keep rolling as the $1.1
billion MGM Grand Macau and the $308 million Ponte
16 resort, financed in part by Ho, become part of
Macau's gambling landscape this year. Spurred by
gaming revenue, the city's GDP growth for the year
will exceed 20%, according to government
projections.
Macau's tourism industry is
growing so fast - 26 million visitors are expected
this year, and 30 million in 2008 - that the
city's transport network has reached a breaking
point. A new ferry terminal, which will include a
heliport, is being built on Taipa Island to ease
the strain on two existing terminals, which deal
with as many as 300 launchings a day. Macau's
woefully inadequate taxi supplies will also need a
big boost, and the government has proposed a
20-kilometer light-rail system. Tellingly,
however, the proposal has been pilloried by locals
because it calls for the link to serve casinos
while bypassing low-income areas.
The
conflict over the light-rail proposal points to a
larger battle over Macau's lost soul.
Now
that the city is a gaming mecca, problem gambling
among locals is on the rise, as is casino-related
corruption in the police force. Ironically -
thanks to taxes on casinos - spending on education
is higher than ever, but an increasing number of
students are dropping out of school in their late
teens to take up casino jobs that pay as much as
US$2,200 a month, twice the median income in the
city. And some of the young croupiers who work in
one casino apparently gamble their earnings away
in others.
Highlighting the problem this
summer, two young card dealers leaped to their
deaths from highrise buildings after suffering big
losses at the city's gambling tables.
The
police are also not immune to the gambling fever.
An immigration police officer turned loan shark
has been arrested for financing the gambling habit
of at least 15 of his colleagues, and another
24-year veteran of the force, a deputy sergeant,
has been charged with embezzling $36,000 to cover
his gambling losses.
Charges of corruption
have reached the highest levels of government.
Former secretary of transport and public works Au
Man-long, the man who oversaw much of the
casino-construction boom over the past few years,
was arrested last December on charges of taking
and offering bribes and money-laundering. And a
South China Morning Post investigation revealed
last month that Macau's chief executive, Edmund Ho
Hau-wah, holds an undisclosed, indirect stake in
Stanley Ho's gambling empire.
Government
information director Victor Chan Chi-ping issued a
statement that the chief executive declared all
his assets in accordance with the law when he
assumed office in 1999 and that the suspect shares
had been transferred to his brother, but that is
impossible to verify, as the transfer documents
have not been made public. Meanwhile, Hong Kong
corporate filings show no record of the transfer.
The chief executive, once the darling of
his political masters in Beijing, faces mounting
criticism and labor unrest that has culminated in
violent street protests. On May 1, Labor Day in
most of the world, 2,400 demonstrators turned out
to decry official corruption and rail against
illegal immigrants working in Macau's construction
industry.
One of the demonstrators'
favorite chants was: "Edmund Ho step down."
When the protest turned into a riot,
police fired warning shots into the air to
disperse the crowd. A passing motorcyclist was
apparently struck in the neck by one of the
bullets. The 50-year-old man survived, but the
reputation of Macau's police force - and that of
city as a whole - took a big blow.
A
similar protest also turned violent on the
previous May Day. Clearly, despite the glimmering
facade of the Venetian, all is not well in Macau.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and
writer at Hong Kong International School. He can
be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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