China vows to accelerate fight against cross-border gambling

The Ministry said it would “continue to advance the work of combating cross-border gambling in depth, resolutely curbing cross-border gambling chaos and striving to create a safe and stable political and social environment for the successful convening of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,” which is set to take place in the northern hemisphere autumn of 2022.

In particular, the Ministry outlined a plan to “completely destroy” networks of foreign “mega-gambling groups”, seemingly a reference to Macau’s junkets. The statement cited China’s success in shutting down such cross-border gambling groups in 2021, referencing the destruction of “the A Group of extraordinarily large cross-border gambling gangs” which it said had been recruiting citizens for gambling purposes and sucking money out of China. This appears to be a reference to Suncity Group, which shut down its junket business in December following the arrest and detention of its CEO, Alvin Chau.

According to the Ministry, 2022 will see a centralized nationwide effort against cross-border gambling with “cluster strikes against major cases”. It also promised to improve a previously announced blacklist of overseas tourism destinations said to be luring Chinese citizens for gambling purposes.

“It is necessary to thoroughly identify those who go abroad to be involved in gambling fraud, improve the entry and exit ‘blacklist’ of gambling-related personnel, dynamically djust the ‘blacklist’ of tourist destinations, continue to strengthen the construction of border material defense technology and carry out in-depth efforts to crack down on obstructing national border management,” the statement said.

Specific areas of enforcement will include controlling the use of virtual currencies and shutting down gambling-related websites and applications.
The Ministry also outlines plans to implement a “reward and punishment” system for those within government agencies responsible for assisting in the fight against cross-border gambling. This system would “commend and reward those who have made outstanding achievements in governance” but “report criticism for those who work slowly and procrastinate.”

The Ministry said only last month that it had investigated more than 17,000 cases of cross-border gambling and arrested more than 80,000 suspects in 2021 as part of its gambling crackdown.

By Ben Blaschke