Word: casino
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...Seat The man who has to cure the ill-effects of the casino boom is the man who started it: Edmund Ho, a 53-year-old former accountant who became Chief Executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region when it was returned to China by Portugal in 1999. When Ho took over, Macau was economically dormant. The gaming industry was a moribund monopoly controlled by tycoon Stanley Ho (who is unrelated to Edmund). Many residents of nearby Hong Kong stayed away from the city's seedy casinos because they feared they might be caught up in the occasional burst...
...just a few years, Edmund Ho turned the city around. He cracked down on crime and, more importantly, he introduced competition to the gaming market by issuing new casino licenses in 2002. Today there are six gaming operators. Eager to tap the burgeoning wealth of a rising China, some of the biggest names in gambling, including Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM Mirage, came charging into Macau, and the economy roared. Ho was fêted as a miracle worker...
...Hong Kong, Beijing has no taste for another in Macau. So the city's government is starting to tackle local problems. It is in the process of revising labor laws to provide greater protection for local workers, and in July, the Finance Secretary, Tam Pak-yuen, implored the casino operators to promote Macanese to higher managerial positions. Backed by Beijing, Ho is also putting the brakes on Macau's casino boom. In April, he froze the issuance of new gaming concessions and imposed a moratorium on new casino projects, beyond those already in progress. In July, Macau's government announced...
...steps may slow the gambling boom, but to a cash-strapped populace, the sound of the clinking chips is simply too enticing to pass up. Lei Ka-ling, 20, opted out of college and enrolled instead in a free dealer-training course at the government-run Macao Tourism and Casino Career Centre. Lei says she had little choice. Her father, a hotel repairman, and mother, a janitor at a construction site, were barely able to support the family as Macau's costs rose. The salary Lei can earn as a dealer, roughly $1,900 a month, will instantly double...
...cramped apartment, Ng, the construction worker, worries that his two young sons will wind up dealing cards for a living instead of becoming bankers or policemen. "Working in a casino will have a bad influence on them," Ng says. There may be little, though, that he can do. Bruce Springsteen, in his classic song Atlantic City, tells of the dangerous mix of vice and hope that the casinos brought to the New Jersey shore. "Down here it's just winners and losers and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line," he sings. In Macau, too many...