Chapter 40 China, the "island of gambling" surrounded by the Greater China Cultural Circle

Between educating officials to be honest and banning officials from leaving the country to prevent corruption, the latter seems to be a metaphysically far-fetched logic.For another example, if men are lustful, should they reduce women, or not allow women to go out to the streets? Prohibition of gambling has been the basic ethics of Chinese civilization for thousands of years, but in today's Greater China cultural circle, gambling has been recognized as a smoke-free industry, and is even considered the key to reversing the downturn in local industries and improving people's well-being.However, the struggle from "gambling ban" to "gambling" is even more difficult than the opening of the port.The economic development of the mainland has forced the surrounding countries in the Greater China Cultural Circle to scramble to start gambling, trying to attract more high rollers from the mainland and stimulate the local economy.

At the beginning of next year, from Sentosa in Singapore in the south, Walkerhill in South Korea in the north, Genting Highlands in Malaysia in the west, Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands in the east, and Penghu and Jinma in Taiwan, it seems that mainland China will be swept by a river overnight. Gambling chain blockade. On the other side of the Taiwan Strait, whether to open gambling has been debated for 10 years. 10 years ago, Taiwan's Legislative Yuan fought all night. In the early hours of the morning, it passed the so-called "Amendment to the Public Lottery Issuance Regulations" in the third reading, which included the "gaming clause". Let the Kuomintang's seat advantage in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan disappear instantly.The farce has been controversial for a long time. In the end, the then Premier Xiao Wanchang was afraid of public opinion and pressure from the top, so he deliberately deleted the "gaming clause", and Taiwan's "legalization of gambling" was aborted.Shen Fuxiong, a legislator of the Democratic Progressive Party, proposed to abolish the "Game Clause", which won a lot of support from the public.

The Taiwan authorities "prohibit gambling", and the local governments under their jurisdiction don't care about it.The outlying islands of Penghu and Golden Horse competed to invest in large-scale resorts and privately set up gaming companies and casinos, forcing the Taiwan authorities to review the "gaming terms."Many resorts on outlying islands deliberately reserve space for dedicated gaming companies during the design stage to make full preparations for future "gambling".Local media in Taiwan determined that with direct flights and the opening of Taiwan to mainland tourists, at least 30 tourist hotels are currently ready to join the gaming industry at any time.People in Taiwan do not need to go to Macau or use the Internet to gamble on football, basketball, baseball, horse racing and dog racing. This is tantamount to opening up a new way for Taiwan's industries.

Before Taiwan passed the "Gaming Clause", there were already many "XXXe68.com" websites that were homophonic for "Yiyifa" overnight. They wanted to seize the gaming market and sold the URLs and websites to gaming companies for profit. People in Taiwan agree that "gambling" will become an important yardstick for Ma Ying-jeou's political performance together with the "three direct links". No country in the world has a gaming industry as cautious as Singapore. This country has spent 40 years arguing about "gambling". Institutionally speaking, Singapore is the closest "state capitalism" to China.In order to gamble, the Lee Hsien Loong government even abandoned the 17-year-old "Technology Island" strategy, and turned to a comprehensive transformation towards a consumption-oriented and tourism-oriented economy. After the financial turmoil in Southeast Asia in 1997, Singapore once turned to focus on the biotechnology industry, but the investment was huge with little effect.Therefore, in 2005, the Lee Hsien Loong government officially decided to fully open the gaming industry.Today, Singapore receives more than US$900 million in taxes from the gaming industry every year, but it is still far from meeting the needs of economic development.Singaporeans gamble at least US$700 million every year on Genting in Malaysia, gambling boats in the Strait of Johor and Batam in Indonesia. This is a fatal foreign exchange loss for Singapore.

Singapore's long-ruling People's Action Party government has resisted following in the footsteps of other Asian countries in dabbling in highly profitable casinos, despite knowing that people are heading overseas to gamble.Even in November 2003, then-Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong still rejected the proposal to open a casino and was seen as a conservative leader of Singapore.However, his thinking has changed a lot in recent years. He realized that if Singapore's views on some issues remain unchanged, its economic leadership in the region will be replaced by other countries.Singapore's breaking of the taboo to open casinos not only proves that "the situation is stronger than people", but also shows the "pragmatism first" philosophy of governing the country.

The Japanese's conservatism in "gambling" is almost the last moral bottom line for completely inheriting the traditional concepts of Greater China culture.But now, Toshiro Mihara, an adviser to the Liberal Democratic Party's gaming industry research group, revealed that almost half of Japan's House of Representatives members, including some from the opposition, support the general concept of legalizing casinos. At present in Japan, only horse racing, car racing, rowing and sports lottery are allowed gambling methods, and there is also the "pachinko machine" in the cloak of games.Gambling on sports events is still strictly limited to the lottery. Once the "gambling ban" law is abolished as scheduled, gambling and other underground gambling will fully surface.Japan has initially planned to set up special casinos in Okinawa and Tokyo in the Ryukyu Islands and open gaming companies.

This is a new challenge that the Chinese government must face, but it may also make them put aside their last worries.In addition to the bottom line of morality, China's state system, including our constitution, has been forming greater obstacles to open gambling.The Public Welfare Lottery Affairs Research Institute of Peking University has been collecting opinions from all walks of life in the form of lottery summit forums in recent years.Among these opinions, many insightful people believe that gambling and sex are the two fundamental desires of human beings, and almost from the founding of the People’s Republic of China, New China has resolutely expressed its attitude of prohibiting the gambling and sex industries in the form of the Constitution.But first of all, morality is everyone's constraint on their own code of conduct, and some special industries should not be marked with morality.For example, between educating officials to be honest and banning officials from leaving the country to prevent corruption, it seems that the latter is a metaphysically far-fetched logic.For another example, if men are lustful, should they reduce women, or not allow women to go out to the streets?