China’s gambling cadres

“Gambling advertising extolls ‘get rich quick; paradigms. Ironically, these are inconsistent with the Filipino work ethic and our belief in education as a means out of poverty.

There’s a reason China criminalized gambling. Unfortunately, with both eyes open and arms outstretched to welcome them, we’ve imported China’s gambling cadres despite the growing evidence of social and economic costs inflicted by this ill-advised de facto importation of a patently cancerous industry.

While the mode to import Chinese gambling is through online systems where both domestic laws as well as the global regulatory infrastructure remain fluid, absent reliable jurisprudence and legal precedents that cover its combinations and permutations, there’s a substantial amount of physicality in hosting what China considers criminal. This comes in the form of thousands of Chinese who would otherwise be crowding China’s unemployment lines rather than crowding out our own.

Poverty forces people into unnecessary compromises and our sufferance of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) is a case in point.

It bears looking at the geographic origins of these gambling cadres that by some standards have been described as an invading alien army creeping, not merely into the economy, but deep into the social foundations of an overly hospitable Filipino community.

The refusal, or perhaps the inherent inability, of POGO to seamlessly assimilate and imbue distinctly Filipino values of courtesy, kindness, even cleanliness and basic respect, exacts a toll on us where we host imported aberrations. It’s relentless constancy as it infects an ever-widening swathe of Filipino society eats away at our own values, first turning us mildly resistant, and then, over time, calloused and indifferent. Heaven forbid, when we turn just as discourteous, unkind and disrespectful.

In Macau where these spawned, the Chinese gambling experience bears looking at if only to project what might eventually befall us should we continue to be blind to this creeping scourge.

A scholarly treatise by Yim King Penny Wan, Xin Crystal Li and Weng Hang Kong that eventually backstopped the Chinese government’s gambling policies published after gambling had been declared illegal in China reveals the rationale behind the criminalization.

To be fair, let us quickly go through undeniable upsides that Macau’s gambling liberalization had brought. Albeit, in the long run, these were eventually overshadowed by incessant ills.

These upsides are evident in our own metropolis especially where large casino operations are currently being hosted. Ranging from a hike in the host city’s financial wherewithal from fees, licensing and local taxes, the improvement of the urban landscape from the modernization of roads and buildings, malls and hotels, to the expansion of entertainment facilities, convention centers, theaters, restaurants and arenas, the exponential growth along casino row west of Manila mirrors much of the same experienced by Macau.

But look at the downsides that had slowly been inflicted in Macau. See reflected in our neighborhoods where gambling and online gambling dominate, the same ills gradually developing into social crisis proportions.

Of the myriad of ills, let’s focus on three reminiscent of the Macau dilemma.

One, most of these Chinese cadres are relatively poorly educated. That explains a lot. It is reflective of the bane of gambling in general. The Macau experience showed an increasing number of school dropouts where gambling proliferated. To make matters worse, gambling advertising extolls “get rich quick” paradigms. Ironically, these are inconsistent with the Filipino work ethic and our belief in education as a means out of poverty.

Two, the educational trade off impacts negatively on the quality of our domestic labor force where a different set of skills earns top dollar while those attained from the educational system are back-burnered.

The third is economic. The escalating price of residential real estate beyond the modest means of Filipino labor not employed in the gambling industry has led to Filipinos being priced out and forced to commute from the suburbs thus worsening road and transport congestion.