Word: macau
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...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...
...Under the current political system, Ho is effectively appointed by Beijing, but activists believe the needs of the city's downtrodden won't be properly met until their leadership becomes more accountable to Macanese. Ho and his policy team "are like Deng Xiaoping," says Antonio Ng, a member of Macau's Legislative Assembly and a democracy advocate. "They assume that if the economy's doing well, everything else will just fall into place. The way to address our problems is to change the government...
...having already contended with a noisy democracy movement in 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...
...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 the family income. "My parents encouraged me to go to college but our financial situation is already so tight that I decided on my own to become a dealer," she explains. Stories like...