On 18 July, 2018, it was reported that 23 people in nearby Zhenjiang city involved in online gambling are linked to a gang which reportedly profited upwards of ￥700 million, since its beginnings in 2016.
According to Xinhua News, the case, that is said to have involved over ￥4.2 billion, was an online operation based out of the Philippines and run by an online gambling gang, which had members in more than 10 provinces throughout China.
Zhenjiang police confirmed Tuesday, 17 July, that 65 bank accounts have been frozen since arrests were originally made on 23 May, and 23 people arrested.
Police were originally alerted after coming across an advertisement for an online gambling website earlier in the year. The case remains under investigation.
In China, only in the former British and Portuguese colonies of Macau and Hong Kong is gambling legal; anywhere in mainland China, gambling to this day remains illegal, and that includes online gambling. The only other exception is government-approved lotteries.
On 15 February, 2018, a Chinese-born Australian man was arrested in Jiangsu, for “promoting gambling”. 1 year earlier, a group of Australian Crown casino staff members were arrested in China for promoting gambling and sentenced to 10 months jail time in addition to being fined, after pleading guilty in a Shanghai court.
That said, in 2010, at the request from the Hainan government, China’s southern beach holiday capital became a testing ground for the country’s gambling industry, with approval from the State Council. Yet, industry insiders are expecting the extent of such to be quite limited; the likes of horse racing, not casinos.
With Macao’s gambling industry now five times bigger than that of Vegas, it is obvious gambling remains extremely popular with Chinese people but is proving difficult to govern on the mainland, and increasingly online.
