Border casino calls for preventive steps

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently approved a plan to set up a big casino near Russia's border with China. Since experts believe the casino will attract gamblers from China and Japan, China's disciplinary inspection departments should take steps to prevent officials from drifting across the border to gamble, says an article in China Youth Daily. Excerpt:

The problem of gambling, fuelled by rising corruption, has worsened among Chinese officials in recent years. Some officials have been crossing the borders into other regions and countries to gamble.

In fact, Chinese travelers have become "honored guests" of casinos across the world. An official of the Disciplinary Inspection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has said a casino on an island off the coast of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the exclusive haunt of Chinese gamblers. And a casino boss in Macao has declared Chinese mainland officials as impressively generous.

Now Russia is about to set up a casino near its border with China, underscoring the seriousness of the gambling problem among Chinese officials.

If we look at gambling crimes, we will realize that Chinese officials addicted to gambling are under poor supervision. Instead of punishing civil servants for going abroad to gamble and being absent from work, we try to find out how they managed to get passports under fake names and carry or transfer huge amounts of money out of the country.

Such cases are a warning, telling us that severe action is becoming increasingly urgent in the fight against cross-border gambling crimes. The Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the ministries of foreign affairs and finance, National Tourism Administration and Bank of China have to launch joint action to eradicate the gambling disease. We will be happy to see the Russian casino suffering from lack of business because of China's crackdown on corruption at home.

(China Daily 09/08/2009 page9)