Visitors Flock to Macau Again, But Its Gambling Dependence Draws Beijing’s Ire
While the Chinese enclave’s casinos were full over the holidays, new regulations threaten a return to the boom of the past decade.
Macau during the Lunar New Year holiday.
Photographer: Eduardo Leal/Bloomberg
After three years of limping through the pandemic, the Chinese gambling hub of Macau is coming back to life. Over the Lunar New Year holiday in January, the former Portuguese colony’s cobblestone streets teemed with visitors, restaurants filled with diners digging into specialties such as poached codfish and pastel de nata, and the city’s dozens of casinos were packed. “I’m ecstatic,” says Kwan Man Chi, owner of a snack shop in the historic center. For the past few years, “we only needed one person to run things. Now we have five, and we’re still really busy.”
The rebound comes as welcome news for a casino industry that analysts predict racked up $1.2 billion in losses last year. The enclave had unseated Las Vegas as global betting capital in 2006, but it was hammered by the border closures under China’s strict Covid Zero rules. After topping its US rival in revenue for more than a decade—sometimes sevenfold—Macau last year fell behind again, booking $5.2 billion, compared with $8.3 billion for the Las Vegas Strip.