Legislation

China – Beijing to expand on its current list of blacklisted gambling destinations

By Phil - 26 January 2021

Casinos in the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam and Australia are likely to be added to a blacklist of overseas gambling operators deemed by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism to be illegally tapping up Chinese play.

The state-run news service Xinhua described this as a ‘second batch’ of overseas destinations. The ministry said: “Casinos in overseas cities attract Chinese tourists to go abroad for gambling activities, disrupting the order of China’s outbound tourism market, and endangering the personal and property safety of Chinese citizens.”

It listed the first group of targets in August 2020 in order to ‘better regulate the tourism market and safeguard the lives and property of Chinese citizens.’ The blacklist system was developed through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Public Security.

Analysts at JP Morgan said: “In the long term, this move could be seen as ‘ring-fencing’ gambling demand/flow within China, which in turn could drive repatriation of demand to Macau. In the near term, it’s inevitable we will see some dent in the pace of VIP recovery given potential collateral damage – junkets/agents who bring players to non-Macau markets are the same ones as those in Macau, and they will most likely keep a low profile for now to avoid any fallout from the clampdown. Overall, we would characterise this news as short-term pain for long-term gain for Macau.”

The exact definition of what happens to a blacklisted country remains unsure but according to JP Morgan it is likely to that’capital flows through underground banks and agents, as well as junkets’ promotion of these overseas markets, will be heavily scrutinised.’

Image By Picrazy2 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70933004