>>2587188As you might know, gambling is banned in China. As a result, there's this degen named Zhao Wei who moved to Macau in the early 1990s. Macau was once a Western colonial outpost. Macau also became known as the Las Vegas of Asia. It was only in 1999 that it was handed over by Portugal, however like Hong Kong, the Basic Law of Macau gaurentees that its system will remain unchanged for 50 years after the handover. It has its own legal systems, seperate courts, currency, indepedent police authorties, etc. So Zhao invested in casinos there and became filthy rich. In 2001, he moved to Mong La, Myanmar where he started a casino franchise. The city started to become known a border town on the edge of the law with drugs, prostitutes, and gambling. However, since Mong La is just across the border from China in Myanmar, Chinese authorities can close the border gates and in 2005 they closed the gate and refused to let citizens cross the border there. After this travel ban, Zhao was invited by the government of Laos to invest in Bokeo Province to stay there as a special guest. He's operated out of there ever since and the Laos government has a 20% stake in the casinos, gets lease payments and taxes.
Laos is doing this out of pragmatic reasons. It's still considered one of the poorest countries in the world. In the 1960s and '70s, America dropped 270 million bombs on Laos making it the most heavily bombed country in the world. People, many of them children, are still killed to this day because of unexploded bombs. In the past decade, China actually built Laos' first modern major railway. However, one of the hardest part of the project was actually removing the American bombs that were leftover. Anyways, not only did it get bombed the fuck out by the US on a scale never seen before in history, it's also a landlocked country with mountainous terrain which makes trade and transport difficult, another reason why it was particulary hard for the CRRC to build the railway, but the train is officially in operations today.
So back in the 2000s when Laos invited Zhao, that was just another way for Laos to build revenue in the country through currency inflows and tourist revenue. They also got job creation for locals in construction, hospitality and service industries. Since gambling is banned in China, Chinese tourists go abroad to gamble which brings
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