Tiny Macau Entering New Gambling Era

23rd January

MACAU — the world's busiest casino town is straining to handle the affections of the world's largest population.

By the boatload, gamblers gripping Chinese passports jostle off ferries, into a customs building in this once-sleepy former Portuguese colony on China's coast. They line up, hundreds deep on a weekend morning, for an entry stamp. Then they line up again for scarce taxis or catch shuttle buses into a town bristling with new casinos, fountains and resorts.

"I think it's become overwhelming," said David Green, a casino expert for accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers in Macau. "The infrastructure isn't really cut out to deal with that."

On a patch of land just one-sixth as large as Washington, D.C., Macau surpassed sprawling Las Vegas last year in gaming revenues, thanks to a growing deluge of mainland Chinese tourists. They are transforming this place faster than imperialism.ever did.

Even compared to mainland China, with its growth of more than 10 percent per year, Macau stands out: with its economy growing last year by 30 percent.

Macau comprises a peninsula and two islands located one hour's ferry ride from Hong Kong. For the last four centuries, Portugal ran the territory as a freewheeling bazaar and imperial outpost, trading silk, sandalwood, porcelain, opium, arms and other goods, all with a spirit of unabashed seediness. The colony was a "weed from Catholic Europe," as Auden put it.

Macau returned to Chinese control in 1999, as a semiautonomous region akin to Hong Kong. Beijing's handpicked leaders embarked on an overhaul, investing in infrastructure and opening the gaming industry to competition. The first foreign-owned casino opened in 2004: the Sands Macao, owned by Las Vegas tycoon Sheldon Adelson.

As luck would have it, an obscure immigration change gave the Sands a blessed start: In 2003, China experimented with allowing its citizens to visit Macau and Hong Kong without mandating that they be part of a tour group.

The Chinese flooded to Macau, the closest place to gamble from the mainland Within a single year, the Sands Macao had paid for its own construction. By the end of last year, tourism had nearly quadrupled in a decade to 27 million people annually, according to figures released last week. More than half of them and by far the fastest-growing segment are from mainland China.