Casino gaming in Macau

Identified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contemporary Macau has metamorphosed into a surreal, hypermodern urban landscape augmented by massive casino megaresorts, including two of the world’s largest buildings. In Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China’s Consumer Revolution, Tim Simpson uncovers various roots of the region’s radical transformation. Here, Simpson is joined in conversation with Cathryn H. Clayton.

Tim Simpson is associate professor of communication at the University of Macau.

Cathryn H. Clayton is associate professor and chair of the Asian studies program at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

WORKS REFERENCED:

David Schwartz / Suburban Xanadu

Natasha Dow Schüll / Addiction by Design

Susan Strange / Casino Capitalism

Cathryn H. Clayton / Sovereignty at the Edge

PEOPLE REFERENCED:
Sheldon Adelson

John Maynard Keynes

Deng Xiaoping

“A must-read for scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture, particularly those working in or studying urbanization in China.”
—Miodrag Mitrašinović

Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China’s Consumer Revolution is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Episode Transcript

Cathryn H. Clayton (00:04):
You're kind of saying, listen. People,
everyday consumers are the oneswho are making the whole system
go.

Tim Simpson (00:10):
I look at the casino in Macau as an
environment where people areintroduced to behaviors and
practices that have to do withrisk, anticipation about the
future, and financialcalculation. They're all parts
of becoming a capitalistsubject.

Cathryn H. Clayton (00:29):
Hi, everyone. I'm Catherine Clayton,
associate professor and chair ofthe department of Asian studies
at the University of Hawaii atManoa. I've been researching and
writing about Macau since themid nineteen nineties. Today,
I'm very excited to be talkingwith Tim Simpson about his book,
Betting on Macau, CasinoCapitalism and Consumer
Revolution, which I think issuch an ambitious and

(00:50):
fascinating read. I'mparticularly happy to be here
since, Tim and I have known eachother for, gosh, more than
twenty years now, believe it ornot.
We were colleagues at theUniversity of Macau in the early
two thousands, just around thetime the book begins. Well, I
mean, the book goes back to thefifteenth century, but, this
book opens with Tim talkingabout his time in the early two
thousands. So, Tim, could youjust tell us a little bit about

(01:13):
yourself and how you came to thetopic of this book?

Tim Simpson (01:16):
Yeah. Thank you. I was working in my first job in
The US after graduating from myPhD program. I was working at
Ohio University, and that schoolsent me to, both Bangkok and
Hong Kong to work in someoverseas programs. And I got
really interested in Asia andAsian cities as a result, and so

(01:38):
I decided to try to relocate toAsia.
And I was looking for a job inHong Kong. I wasn't successful,
but I happened to see anadvertisement for a job at the
University of Macau. And I wasable to get that job,
fortunately, but I knew nothingabout Macau at the time. I only
knew it was somewhere close toHong Kong and that it had some
vague association with Portugal.And so I moved to Macau to take

(02:02):
up the position at theUniversity of Macau in 02/2001,
and that, coincidentally, was atthe very end of Portugal's Four
Hundred And Fifty Yearadministration of Macau.
Macau was a Portuguese territoryfor almost five hundred years.
In 1999, Portugal returned Macauto China, handed over Macau to

(02:24):
China, and I arrived eighteenmonths later in 02/2001. So that
was one coincidence, which I isis that I came right at the end
of Portuguese rule. And theother coincidence was a couple
of years after I arrived, therewas a major transformation in
Macau's casino industry, andsome foreign casino companies

(02:46):
came in and started buildingcasino resorts. And the first
one of those opened in 02/2004,which was three years after I
arrived, and Macau started thisincredible transformation at
that time.
So I just happened to arriveright at the beginning of what
would be a twenty yeartransformation of Macau into to

(03:06):
a completely different kind ofplace. So I had the, just a
fortunate opportunity to observethat firsthand. It was a total
accident and coincidence that Ihappened to arrive at that time,
and that sort of prompted myinterest in writing the book.
And it then it took about twentyyears to actually finish the

(03:26):
book, to to really think itthrough and finish it.

Cathryn H. Clayton (03:29):
Yeah. Slow slow thinking is is good. It's
better than the fast foodvariety of books if you ask me.
And so you're currently still atthe University of Macau. Is that
right?

Tim Simpson (03:38):
Yes. I've been here twenty three years now.

Cathryn H. Clayton (03:41):
So maybe we can jump into the book itself
and you can perhaps give us asort of a general overview of
the book.

Tim Simpson (03:48):
Sure. Like I said, I arrived in 02/2001 and Macau's
casino industry started tochange. And actually, the entire
city itself started to change in02/2004 in a dramatic way. I
decided to write the bookfocused on that twenty year
period of radical transformationof Macau starting in around

(04:12):
02/2001, basically, the nexttwenty years. But to do that, to
write about the that twenty yearperiod, I tried to to situate
Macau in the five hundred yearhistory of Portugal's role in
Macau.
Macau was a Portuguese territoryfor almost five hundred years.
And I tried also to situateMacau in the five hundred year
history of global capitalismBecause I as I learned something

(04:36):
about Macau, I discovered thatMacau played a crucial role at
the very outset of the emergenceof the global capitalist system
five hundred years ago. It wasthe the gateway for trade
between China and Europe. Macausort of managed the vast
majority of trade between Chinaand the Western world five
hundred years ago at the outsetof the emergence of the global

(04:59):
capitalist system. And then itsort of fell into a state of
obscurity.
The world sort of passed Macauby, and everybody kind of forgot
about it. And it was this sortof interesting peripheral
territory for hundreds of years.And then because of China's
economic reforms, which startedin 1978, Macau sort of emerged

(05:20):
again to play a new role in anew era of capitalism that I
think is defined by the reformera of China and China's
emergence as kind of a marketsociety. I focus on the the last
twenty years of Macau, andthat's primarily what the book
is about, but I try to situateit in this five hundred year
narrative about the emergence ofthe global capitalist system.

Cathryn H. Clayton (05:44):
It's really fascinating. There's some of the
parallels you draw between sortof, you know, Venice and of the
sixteenth century and Macau ofthe twenty first century. I
really love that sort of waythat you go you tack back but in
forth between the groundedobservations of what's going on
in Macau these days and thisharking back to five hundred
years. One of the points we makein the book is that it's really

(06:05):
common to call Macau the LasVegas of Asia. And in the book,
you start out kind of with theidea that this ain't Vegas.
Could you talk a little bitabout what the differences are
that you see between these twocities and why sort of it ain't
Vegas is, a really importantthing to keep in mind when
thinking about Macau?

Tim Simpson (06:22):
Yeah. Las Vegas is obviously sort of in the global
imaginary, the prototypicalcasino city. And when people
think about gambling cities,they think about Las Vegas. I
guess a long time ago, it wasMonaco. But in the twentieth
century, it's Las Vegas, andeverything sort of measured
against the the model of LasVegas.

(06:42):
And when I came to Macau, thatphrase, it ain't Vegas, is
something that a lot of peoplesaid to me, a lot of expats.
They asked me when I firstarrived, have you ever been
inside the Lisboa Casino? Thatwas the epitome of the casinos
in Macau at the time, and it wascompletely different from the
typical Las Vegas casino. Andthat's the way that expats tend

(07:03):
to to describe it when they askme. Have you been in the Lisboa?
It ain't Vegas, they would say.And I heard that phrase so many
times, it stuck in my mind. Andwhen Macau's casino industry
started taking off, there was alot of comparisons of Macau to
Las Vegas, and it only took afew years before Macau's casino
revenues surpassed Las Vegas.And then a few years later,

(07:27):
Macau's casino revenues werefive times greater than Las
Vegas. And at the epitome ofMacau's the the year that
Macau's revenues reached theglobal record, it was seven
times greater than Las Vegas.
And, actually, Macau's revenues,that that was 2,013, 7 times
greater than Las Vegas and equalto all of the casinos in every

(07:51):
gaming jurisdiction in theentire United States. So so I
started thinking Macau is notthe Las Vegas of Asia. I think
Las Vegas is the is the Macau ofNorth America. You know? Tried
to turn the tables.
But the more I thought about itand really tried to to
understand Macau, the more Irealized it's completely
different from Las Vegas in alot of ways. And I try to set up

(08:14):
those differences in severalways in the book. In terms of
the big picture, in terms ofpolitical economy, Las Vegas is
a product of thesuburbanization, the twentieth
century suburbanization of TheUnited States, and Macau is the
product of the twenty firstcentury urbanization of China.
So when I say Las Vegas is aproduct of suburbanization, I'm

(08:37):
drawing on a book by DavidSchwartz called Suburban Xanadu.
And David Schwartz is ahistorian at the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, and he makesa very interesting argument that
we need to understand thedevelopment of Las Vegas in the
twentieth century as part ofthat general suburbanization
process.
And there's several, elements tohis argument. I won't go over

(09:00):
all of them, but I I I thoughtthat was a really interesting
way of thinking about Las Vegas.And even the casino resorts on
the Las Vegas Strip, he comparesto, like, the shopping malls
that would typify twentiethcentury suburban United States.
And Macau, by contrast, is aproduct of the urbanization of
China. And China's reform eratransformation into sort of a

(09:24):
consumer economy, which I try totrack in the book, is driven by
this state directed top downurbanization project where the
central government is trying torapidly urbanize the population.
China, as you know, was largelya rural population and sort of
personified by the rural peasantwhen people thought of China

(09:47):
historically. And today, the thegoal is to try to rapidly
urbanize that population and tomove everybody to cities in
hopes that, when people relocateto cities, they will buy houses.
They will buy cars. They'll eatin restaurants and buy cosmetics
and fashion and so on, and itwill create a domestic consumer

(10:08):
economy in China. So I thinkMacau's emergence sort of
coincided with this urbanizationproject, which is on a scale
that's sort of never existed inglobal history before, China's
urbanization.
So if Las Vegas is a product oftwentieth century
suburbanization, I thought ofMacau as a product of China's

(10:28):
Twenty First centuryurbanization. So that in in
terms of this the politicaleconomy of Macau, that's how I
would make that distinction. Butin a more practical way, there's
some real differences betweenLas Vegas and Macau. So anybody
who's been to Las Vegas wouldrecognize right away that it's a
party city. And you don't haveto even do anything in Las Vegas

(10:51):
except go to the Las VegasStrip, and you can sit by the
side of the Strip and in anoutdoor bar and and have a
cocktail or a beer and justwatch this parade of debauchery
happening in front of you.
And that's that's the whole funof Las Vegas. It's just as soon
as you get off the plane, youfeel that party vibe in the
airport. There's people gamblingin the airport. There's music

(11:12):
playing, limousines lined up,and you feel like you're in this
party city. Then you go to thestrip and you become part of
that parade of people.
You become part of the spectaclejust by observing it. And that's
sort of that party vibe is sortof what's interesting about Las
Vegas to tourists. But Macau,even though it's a casino city
and there are casinos,throughout the city, they're

(11:36):
everywhere, it doesn't have thatsame party vibe at all. Las
Vegas makes the majority of itsmoney from things other than
gambling. You know, people go toLas Vegas to, eat at a
steakhouse and buy a bottle ofchampagne right in a limousine
and sit by the swimming pool, goto a nightclub, and they spend

(11:58):
their money on all those things.
And then they also gamble sortof as a complement to all those
activities. And so most of themoney in Las Vegas, most of the
revenue comes from thosenongaming activities. But in
Macau, by contrast, people cometo gamble, and the large
majority of the revenue comesstrictly from gambling. And

(12:19):
that's one of the first thingsyou notice about Macau. It's not
that people aren't having fun,and it's not that they aren't
partying because, of course,they are, but it doesn't have
that same vibe at all.
Macau has something like a LasVegas Strip. It's called the
Cotai Strip, and it was createdby Sheldon Adelson, who was a
Las Vegas Entrepreneur. And hewas trying to create the Las

(12:42):
Vegas Strip in Macau. But if yougo to the Cotai Strip, you've
been there, there are notparades of people walking down
the street. There aren't peoplegetting drunk.
There aren't people in bathingsuits out in public like you see
in Las Vegas. It's it's atotally different vibe. Peoples
tend to come to Macau to gamble,and they take gambling very
seriously. And they don't getdrunk while they're gambling

(13:05):
because they wanna concentrateon the game. They don't wanna be
distracted by the party.
So the the vibe is completelydifferent in Macau. But when you
get inside the casino, you seeother distinctions as well. When
people do gamble in Las Vegas,their favorite activity is to
play the slot machine. Soelectronic gambling is where the

(13:27):
majority of Las Vegas revenuesare made. And in Macau, people
like to play table games.
They like to play against a livedealer, face to face. In Las
Vegas, when people play tablegames, the favorite game tends
to be poker or some variety ofpoker. There's many different
variations on the game. But theprototypical table game in Las

(13:50):
Vegas is poker. Whereas inMacau, the most popular game by
far is baccarat, and that's whateverybody plays.
And when you get into the VIProoms, which used to be a
prominent part of Macau's gamingeconomy, baccarat is the sole
game played. It's the only gameplayed. When people told me
described Macau by saying itain't Vegas, I try to take that

(14:13):
seriously take that literallyand just understand why it's not
and how that distinction isimportant to understanding
what's happening in Macau today.

Cathryn H. Clayton (14:23):
Do you have a sense of why Macau Gamblers
tend to prefer table games andbaccarat?

Tim Simpson (14:29):
Yes. There's a lot of literature in the industry,
the gaming industry, trying tounderstand what they would call
the Chinese gambler. And I trynot to talk about the Chinese
gambler versus the non Chinesegambler because I don't wanna
make that kind of distinction.But I I I do focus on the Macau
Gambler, And most of thegamblers in Macau are Chinese

(14:52):
tourists. So the Chinese gamblerin Macau tends to prefer to play
table games.
One reason may be because peoplelike the face to face, head to
head battle between the gamblerand the casino. They like to
gamble against a live dealer,and they like to gamble directly
against the casino. Part of thathas to do with people's ideas

(15:15):
about luck and their ability toengage in behavior that will
help them, they believe, controlthe outcome of the game.
Gamblers in Macau feel like whenthey play a table game, they can
intervene sometimes in theoutcome of the game by engaging
in certain kinds of behaviors orritual practices, and they feel
like maybe that's not sopossible with a slot machine,

(15:37):
which has just been programmedto have a certain outcome.
Historically, people just didn'ttrust slot machines, and they
felt like they had a much betterchance of getting a fair deal
with the by playing a human.
But I think now people may havemore trust in the slot machine,
but they're just they find itless interesting to play. So
when they play the table game,they feel like they can

(15:59):
intervene in the outcome. And ifyou watch gamblers in Macau,
you'll see a lot of this kind ofbehavior that people believe may
affect the outcome of the game.For one thing people do is they
keep a record of all the priorhands that have been played on a
baccarat table, and there aresome different, methods for sort

(16:19):
of recording the outcome ofthose hands, then trying to find
patterns in the past play thatthey believe will help them
predict what's going to happenin the next hand. And they also
engage in a behavior they callsqueezing cards.
The baccarat cards are dealtface down. And instead of just
turning them over to see thehand, they will very slowly bend

(16:43):
over the corner of the card sothey can see just a little bit
of the the face value on thecard. And then when they think
they have an idea of what thatface value may be, they may bang
on the table or chant or blow onthe cards to try to change the
the face value before the cardis ultimately revealed. And so

(17:04):
people believe they they mightbe able to intervene in the the
final outcome of the of the cardof the hand by engaging in those
behaviors. And those kinds ofactivities aren't really
possible on slot machines.
Although I should say there areelectronic versions of games
that are created for the Macaumarket, which allow people to

(17:25):
simulate those kind ofbehaviors, to feel like they're
squeezing the card even thoughthey're not actually touching
the physical card.

Cathryn H. Clayton (17:33):
That's fascinating. That's such a
convincing explanation. I nowwanna flip my question around
and ask, why would people inVegas play slot machines? It
sounds so much more boring.Sounds so much less fun than
doing what you're talking aboutpeople doing in Macau.

Tim Simpson (17:44):
Exactly. And and that's another feature of it is
that the slot machine in LasVegas tends to be a very
individual activity. And,Natasha Dal Scholl has a a
really great book calledAddicted by Design, which is
about slot machines in LasVegas. I think it's the best
book ever written aboutgambling. And she does a very

(18:04):
good job of describing that kindof solitary environment that
people meld with the machine,and they zone out everything
else.
They get in the zone, and theoutside solitary experience.
Whereas gambling on the at thetable game in Macau is a
collective experience, andpeople like to gather around and

(18:28):
watch the gambler play and andplace bets, and they will back
bet on on on the bet. So someonestanding behind the table may
place a bet behind the personwho's gambling, which is
something that's not so welcomein Las Vegas, but it's very
common in Macau. And people liketo gather around and cheer on
the the activity. So if you'rein a casino in Macau, you'll

(18:51):
often hear a lot of noise.
And if you follow the sound,you'll see a big group of people
gathered around a baccarat tablewhere something interesting is
happening. So it's a very muchgroup oriented practice in
Macau. That's anotherdistinction. The other part of
the question you asked was whybaccarat. And the reason
baccarat is so popular I mean,there's probably a lot of

(19:14):
reasons, and maybe I don'tunderstand all of them.
But one reason is that baccarathas the best odds of any table
game in the casino. It has thelowest house advantage. Of
course, the casino always hasthe advantage in every game, and
that's how casinos make theirmoney. But baccarat has the
lowest house edge. It's aextremely simple game to play.

(19:37):
The rules are ridiculouslysimple, sort of like, betting on
flipping a coin. There's onlytwo possible outcomes. There's
really three outcomes. Theversion of baccarat that's
played in Macau Works, it'scalled Punto Banco baccarat,
player banker baccarat. Andthere's two positions at the
table, player and banker, andeach position is dealt two

(19:58):
cards, and then you bet onwhether you think player or
banker will have the betterhand.
It's sort of like betting onflipping a coin, heads or tails.
And there's no decisions made bythe gambler or by the better.
The only decision is, do I thinkplayer or banker is going to
win? So it's an extremely simplegame. But when it's played for
high stakes, it's a verydramatic experience.

(20:22):
And I think that the fact thatit has the best odds of any
table game and the fact thatit's so simple and therefore so
dramatic and the swings betweenwins and losses are so extreme
in baccarat. That's what makesit so interesting to play.

Cathryn H. Clayton (20:37):
Well, as somebody who's not much of a
gambler, I appreciate yourability to explain these games,
and their appeal. It strikes metoo. I mean, I've been to Vegas
once, and I'm one of thosepeople who I didn't go to
gamble. I gambled because Iwent, because that's what you're
supposed to do in Vegas. And itstrikes me that maybe that's
part of it.
I'm not gonna go to a table andshow off how little I know about
gambling. I wanna go to a slotmachine and see if I can win

(20:58):
anything without anyone knowingthat I'm a complete ignoramus.
But if you go to Macau togamble, then you probably also
want to have this experience ofbeing there with friends and
maybe showing off how good youare at these various games even
if they're not necessarily skillbased.

Tim Simpson (21:12):
I think that's exactly right. And I've had the
same experience in Las Vegas. Bythe way, I'm not any big gambler
either. I've gambled just justso that I know what it feels
like to do it. I'm not good atit necessarily.
But I have gambled in Las Vegas,and I've have had the experience
of playing blackjack, which doeshave an element of skill, and
drawing cards when everybodyelse expected that based on the

(21:36):
dealer's hand that no one woulddraw a card, and then I screwed
it up and made everybody losemoney. You want you do that one
time with a group of strangers,and you never wanna sit back
down at another blackjack table.So you you quickly realize, oh,
I can sit at the bar, and I canplay video blackjack, and that's
much safer and simpler. Andthat's the appeal of the slot
machine, I think. But in Macau,yeah, there's definitely a

(21:58):
public performance involved.
It takes a lot of confidencebecause the person who places
the largest bet on a hand is theperson who gets to squeeze the
cards, who gets to bend over thecard to reveal the the face
value. And people do it in avery dramatic way, and they
destroy the cards every timethey do it. So the Macau casinos

(22:18):
go through hundreds of thousandsof decks of cards because they
have to throw them out aftereach set of play. Yeah. Because
the cards are destroyed whenpeople bend over the the edge,
but you have to have a lot ofconfidence to do that in front
of a crowd of people who aregathered around the table.
And especially if you if youbelieve that the way you squeeze

(22:40):
the card can have an effect onthe outcome of the hand, because
in there's a lot of pressure onyour ability to do that
procedure correctly.

Cathryn H. Clayton (22:49):
Totally fascinating. But, so just
building out of this casinoexperience, you use the phrase
casino capitalism, which otherauthors have used before kind of
metaphorically. Can you talk alittle bit about how you use
that phrase in this book? You'retalking not just about the
actual experience of the casino,but sort of how we can
extrapolate that to thinkingabout capitalism and this
perhaps new era of capitalismthat we're entering into.

Tim Simpson (23:11):
Yeah. Casino capitalism is a key concept in
the book. It's actually in thesubtitle, casino capitalism and
China's consumer revolution. Ieven hesitated to use that
phrase in the subtitle becausethere are several other books
that have the phrase casinocapitalism in in the title. But
I felt like the reason it'soften used is because it's a

(23:33):
catchy phrase, and peopleimmediately know what it means.
But my book is a extended effortto try to theorize casino
capitalism in a kind of distinctway in reference specifically to
Macau. So I thought it wasimportant that it be in the
title because it is central toeverything I'm trying to to do

(23:53):
in the book. Casino capitalism,I think the first use of that
analogy that capitalism is likea casino can be attributed to
John Maynard Keynes. He said themarket is like a casino or
capitalism is like a casino. Butthe person who popularized that
phrase is Susan Strange,political economist who

(24:14):
published a book called casinocapitalism that was very widely
read, and it's hercharacterization of the global
economy post 1970.
The end of the gold standard,the gold backed dollar by
Richard Nixon in the earlynineteen seventies, the rise of
financialization, the emergenceof kind of electronic forms of

(24:37):
globalization that connected allthe different markets together
into a global market, and alsothe tendency to turn things like
life insurance policies intofinancial products, that could
be traded on the market. All ofthese things, she said, turned
the global economy intosomething like a casino. And

(24:58):
what she meant was that peoplewere engaging in these very
risky financial trades thataffected everybody because
things that we thought were sortof safe investments, like our
life insurance policies or ourretirement policies, were all
sort of being traded on thesefinancial markets. They were all
being turned into financialproducts. And she was interested

(25:20):
in the risk intensivecharacteristics of the global
economy that emerged starting inthe nineteen seventies, and
that's what she called casinocapitalism.
Some people have pointed outthat if you're worried about
risk, the global economy is notreally like a casino. The casino
company, the owner, pretty muchknows what the outcome is going

(25:42):
to be because all the casinogames are based on probabilities
and where the casino will alwayswin in the long term. So it's
not really so unpredictable inthe way that Susan Strange was
trying to describe the globaleconomy. But, anyway, that's
what she meant by casinocapitalism, and that's the use
of the phrase that became verypopular. But I try to take

(26:04):
casino capitalism much moreliterally and really look at the
casino as a environment wheretourists learn behaviors that
are part of capitalism.
They learn how to be capitalist.And I'm talking specifically
about casinos in Macau, not justcasinos everywhere, because I
wanna sort of historicize orcontextualize, my discussion to

(26:28):
Macau because I think Macau is aunique place, a unique history,
and a particular geography. Andto understand what's happening
in Macau, we have to understandit in terms of that historical
trajectory. That's the fivehundred year trajectory of
global capitalism, the emergenceof the global capitalist system,
but it's also the more recenttrajectory of China from from a

(26:52):
socialist economy to a what theymight call a market socialist
economy. And I'm interested inMacau's role in that
transformation of China'seconomy.
And that's why the other part ofthe subtitle is casino
capitalism and China's consumerrevolution. I'm trying to look
at Macau's role in China'stransformation into a consumer

(27:12):
economy. That's driven by thaturbanization project that I
mentioned earlier, the attemptby the central government to
implement policies in China thatwill transform China into a
consumer economy, a a domesticconsumer economy. So I'm
interested in Macau's role inthat process. And for this

(27:33):
reason, I look at the casino inMacau as a environment where
people are sort of introduced toa certain set of behaviors and
practices that have to do withrisk and anticipation about the
future and financial calculationand so on that are all parts of

(27:53):
becoming a sort of capitalistsubject.
And so I take casino capitalismvery literally and try to look
at the casino as a pedagogicalenvironment where people learn a
set of behaviors that aretypical of capitalism.

Cathryn H. Clayton (28:07):
I like that because you're putting the
consumer back. I mean, SusanStrange's idea of casino
capitalism doesn't really talkabout us peons who are consumers
as anything but sort of pawns inthe system or who are victims of
these larger forces, and you'rekind of saying, listen, folks,
people, you know, consumers,everyday consumers are the ones
who are making the whole systemgo, and here's here are places

(28:27):
where they learn the ways ofbeing capitalist. By that, do
you mean, like card squeezing,or what what are some of the
things they learn in thesecasinos that would be an example
of this kind of capitalistbehavior?

Tim Simpson (28:39):
I have several chapters where I try to talk
about different dimensions ofthat question, but I'll give you
one sort of practical examplewhich comes at the very end of
the book. I I talked earlierabout the popularity of baccarat
in Macau and the popularity ofthe table game and the tendency
of Chinese gamblers to in Macauto prefer to play table games

(29:02):
rather than a a slot machine.But there's been a big effort in
Macau by the global gamblingindustry and also by the local
Macau government and also by theChinese central government in
different ways to sort oftransform the gambling
activities and the typicalgambler in Macau into a
different kind of person. Andone element of that is the

(29:26):
introduction of electronic gamesand the desire to get gamblers
in Macau to stop being soreliant on playing the table
game of baccarat and to playelectronic games. In a variety
of ways, the electronic gamesare much more predictable.
And they also have someadvantages having to do with the
labor in Macau. The the tablegames require a live croupier.

(29:52):
And in Macau, because of thelabor law, the only person who
can hold that job as a dealer ina casino is is a local Macau
citizen who has a Macau residentID. And there's a very small
population in Macau, and there'sa very small population of
people who can be dealers. Andthere's a lot of competition

(30:13):
among the different casinocompanies to hire those dealers
away from each other.
And so the the gambling industryhas a desire to move people onto
electronic games that don'trequire, the live dealer. And
there's also a problem of moneylending in Macau. That's a large
a big issue. VIP gambling, whichrequires people in Macau to loan

(30:39):
money to the gambler, and thethis has caused concerns among
the Chinese central governmentabout the amount of money that
crosses the border and the graymarket and black market into
Macau for the purpose ofgambling. And so for a variety
of reasons, there's been thiseffort to to move the gambler in
Macau to electronic games.

(30:59):
And and so there was anelectronic baccarat machine that
was invented designed just forthe purposes of Macau. It was
designed by, a biopharmaceuticalcompany in Hong Kong that was
doing research about treatmentfor liver fibrosis. And then
when Macau's gaming industryexploded, they diversified into

(31:22):
the design of gaming machinesfor the Macau gaming industry,
and the biopharmaceuticalengineers created this baccarat
machine, which has some of thecharacteristics of live baccarat
that attract the gambler, but ithas electronic elements as well.
And so in one late chapter ofthe book, I try to focus

(31:44):
specifically on an analysis ofthat baccarat machine. It's
called live baccarat.
And it sort of combines a livedealer with the electronic
placing of bets. It has theadvantages of the table game,
the head to head competitionbetween the gambler and the
croupier, but it also has someof the advantages of the

(32:05):
electronic games. So I do ananalysis of that game. And
what's interesting to me aboutthat game is that while baccarat
doesn't require any decision onthe part of the gambler except
whether they're gonna bet onplayer or banker, heads or
tails, basically. The baccaratmachine requires all kinds of

(32:25):
decisions.
It's a it's a much more complexversion of the baccarat game,
and the designers introduce alla a variety of, very complex
forms of betting that requiredifferent forms of calculation.
So in order to play the game atall, it requires calculation. So
I try to analyze that that game,that device as a way into

(32:51):
understanding how when somebodyplays that game, they are also
putting into practice forms offuture anticipation and
financial calculation that arepart of capitalism.

Cathryn H. Clayton (33:04):
That's totally fascinating. And one
another reason I I'm not a verygood capitalist. I that sounds
like so stressful, that game.But is this what you mean by you
use the phrase laboratories ofconsumption. You you sort of
talk about Macau and Hong Kongas laboratories of consumption.
Is that sort of what you'regetting at with that phrase is
the idea that people arelearning these sort of

(33:25):
capitalists ways of being?

Tim Simpson (33:27):
Yeah. The phrase laboratory of consumption is my
interpretation of the phraselaboratory of production, which
was comes from Deng Xiaoping,who was responsible for
introducing China's economicreforms in 1978. So as you know
very well, the start of economicreforms began with the creation

(33:49):
by, Deng Xiaoping by China'sCentral Government in 1978, the
creation of special economiczones along the Southern Coast
of China. And the first one wasShenzhen, and the second special
economic zone was Zhuhai. Andthese were these two cities are
adjacent to Hong Kong and Macau.

(34:11):
And they were specificallychosen as the first special
economic zones because of theproximity to Hong Kong and Macau
and the idea that Hong Kong andMacau would be sort of gateways
for investment from the overseasChinese diaspora in Hong Kong
and Macau and Taiwan andSoutheast Asia and so on. And

(34:32):
the special economic zones werecreated, according to Deng
Xiaoping, as laboratories ofproduction. And they he he
specifically said, we willcreate these special economic
zones. We will allow jointprojects that involve foreign
capital and Chinese workers, andwe will allow foreign companies

(34:54):
to set up factories in thespecial economic zones and
produce goods for export. Andthey will be laboratories of
production where where we willstudy capitalism, and we'll sort
of study how, foreign companiesset up factories, how they
manage workers, how they operateprivate real estate, and so on.

(35:14):
So the special economic zoneswere these self contained zones,
and they were purposely locatedright on the edge of China, the
the the initial zones. And theywere sort of self contained
places so where this experimentcould be undertaken. And then if
it didn't work, they could justbe shut down, and most of the

(35:36):
people in China would never knowthat they existed because they
were so far away fromeverybody's daily experience.
But they were they wereostensibly designed to be
laboratories of production whereChina would study capitalism,
and this was the beginning ofthe economic reforms. And so I
just took the liberty ofthinking of Hong Kong and Macau

(35:58):
as complimentary laboratories ofconsumption.
If the special economic zoneswere laboratories of production,
then Hong Kong and Macau, whichare special administrative
regions, they have a a uniquedesignation, in China, special
administrative regions, the postcolonial city city states could

(36:18):
be thought of as laboratories ofconsumption. China, in an effort
to to build its consumer economyand its urbanization strategy,
one of the first innovationsthat they introduced was a
special exit visa that wouldallow certain select Chinese
citizens from particular citiesand provinces the ability to get

(36:39):
a visa, which would allow themto travel overseas. And the
first places they were allowedto travel were Hong Kong and
Macau. And there was a specialvisa called the individual visit
scheme, which was implementedactually in 02/2002 or 02/2003
at the end of the SARS epidemic,the severe acute respiratory

(37:00):
syndrome epidemic, whichhappened so I moved to Macau in
02/2001. SARS hit in 02/2002.
That was like COVID, except itwas the early version. And then
in 02/2003, at the end of SARS,because SARS really devastated
the economies of Hong Kong andMacau, especially Hong Kong. The

(37:24):
central government introducedthis individual visit scheme,
the special visa, which wouldallow select, Chinese citizens
to travel freely for the firsttime to Hong Kong and Macau. And
I thought of Hong Kong and Macauas serving a a a particular role
in the economic reforms aslaboratories of consumption that

(37:46):
tourists were allowed to come tothese two cities. The first
place they were allowed to gotravel freely as tourists
outside of China.
And both Hong Kong and Macaubecame very popular for Chinese
tourists. Just before COVID inFebruary when was that? 02/2018,

(38:07):
Macau was visited by 40,000,000tourists in one year, and that's
40,000,000, most of whom werefrom Mainland China. And you
have to understand, as you knowvery well, Macau is a very, very
tiny place, much smaller thanyou can imagine if you've never
been here. And with with a verysmall population, 650,000

(38:31):
people, even of that 650,000,half are foreign workers,
basically.
So the actual population ofMacau is very tiny. So when you
put 40,000,000 tourists in thattiny city in one year, it's it's
a it's a massive amount ofpeople. And Hong Kong is the

(38:52):
same. Tens of millions oftourists from Mainland China
every year going to Hong Kong. Imean, there's a lot of reasons
people might travel to Hong Kongand Macau, but one reason has to
do with shopping.
And there's all kinds ofadvantages in terms of taxation
on luxury goods, that that makeboth Hong Kong and Macau very,

(39:15):
popular, very desirable placesto go if you wanna buy things.
Either luxury goods, LouisVuitton bags, or or gold and
diamond jewelry, Chanel fashion,those things are cheaper in Hong
Kong and Macau than they are inMainland China because of the
different tax regime. Also, veryordinary consumer goods like

(39:40):
shampoo and liquid soap and babyformula are also cheaper and
more available in Hong Kong andMac Macau than they are in
China. And they're all and alsopeople trust the veracity of
those products because they knowthat there's a lot of consumer
protection in Hong Kong andMacau. So there's a lot of

(40:00):
reasons that people aremotivated to cross the border.
For all these reasons, I reallythought of Hong Kong and Macau
as laboratories of consumption.And like I said, it's really my
I took the interpretive licenseof just kind of riffing off the
laboratory of production phrasethat Deng Xiaoping used to try

(40:21):
to characterize what I wasseeing in Macau. And this that
really came from my just myobservation of everyday life in
Macau. When when tens ofmillions of tourists started
showing up every year, I justwatched watched what they did,
what they bought, and what theycarried around the town with
them, and that all fed into mycharacterization of of these

(40:41):
places as laboratories.

Cathryn H. Clayton (40:43):
I remember that particular moment in early
two thousands probably when inthe downtown kinda little
Snotter Square area, there usedto be a bunch of shops that
locals would find useful. Andsuddenly, you had three SASA
cosmetic shops open up almostnext door. Not quite. They were,
like, maybe two or three minutewalk away from each other. And
it really struck me.
It was like, how could threeshops all selling the same

(41:06):
brands of cosmetics thrive inthis economy? But that you that
you pointed to it right there.It's like people would just come
and buy cosmetics for all thereasons, you know, for very good
reasons. But it struck me thatthat's sort of when I saw what
you're talking about sort ofplaying out in the city in my
daily life, my daily walksaround town.

Tim Simpson (41:23):
That's exactly right, and that's that's a
perfect example. I live in thatneighborhood. The Sonata Square
area is the historic centralcity that has architecture
that's reminiscent of Lisbon,and it's got this very old
labyrinthine network of oflittle streets and alleys. And I
live right there. And you'reexactly right.

(41:46):
On that Sonata Square area,which is now a major shopping
area, every tourist who comes toMacau is gonna go there and take
photos. And there are threethere are still three Salsa
shops. The same cosmetic companyhas three shops all located on
that same square. And it's notjust Salsa. There's there's
probably seven cosmetic shops ofseveral different brands within

(42:10):
about a two minute walk of eachother, around that area, and
they're packed full of people.
The cosmetics is a perfectexample because, it it it sort
of articulates together so manythings that have to do with
China's consumer revolution. Thethe focus on fashion and

(42:32):
cosmetics, the very calculatingway people compare the prices in
Hong Kong and Macau versus Chinafor the same item and realize
that it might be slightlycheaper in Macau because it's
kind of a duty free city. It'sexempt from the luxury tax,
which is applied to goods luxurygoods in China. And the

(42:54):
availability, once you comehere, of all those places makes
cosmetics the perfect kind ofproduct for people to buy as
part of this consumerrevolution. And I see the same
thing in Hong Kong.
Sausage is everywhere. If you goto, Causeway Bay, you see the
same collection of companieswho's offering the same
cosmetics products.

Cathryn H. Clayton (43:14):
You know, I live in Hawaii now, and some of
the issues are similar. Right?To what extent do we want this
economy? Obviously, we can makea lot of money off tourists, but
to what extent does that thendisplace and disadvantage
locals?

Tim Simpson (43:25):
Hawaii is one of the only states in The US
without get some form ofgambling. I think it's only only
Hawaii and Utah, if I'm notmistaken, that don't have at
least a lottery or something.Yes.

Cathryn H. Clayton (43:37):
Yeah. But I keep trying to introduce it, but
there's there's quite a bit ofresistance to it. I'd like to
just I always like to get alittle bit of the backstory sort
of, you know, the making of kindof questions. So I was just
wondering how you did the fieldwork for the book, especially
your you have chapters about thejunket trade where, you know,
you there are dryads andorganized crime involved. So I
was wondering if you had anyproblems accessing sources,

(43:57):
especially when it came to doingfield work in and around casinos
and junkets and things likethat.

Tim Simpson (44:03):
Yeah. That's a great question, and that's
something I really struggledwith for a variety of reasons.
One very practical obstacle todoing this kind of research is
that I'm a public I'm I'mconsidered a civil servant in
Macau because the University ofMacau is a public university,
and civil servants are notallowed to go inside of the

(44:25):
casinos in Macau. We're notallowed to gamble. We're not
even allowed to go into thecasino.
We can go into the resort, butwe can't cross into the casino.
And that's another way that LasVegas and Macau are different.
If you walk into a casino resortin Las Vegas, you can't help but
walk through the casino. Theyjust merge in with the lobby of

(44:46):
of the hotel. But in Macau,they're sort of self contained.
We have to walk past a barrierto get into the casino, and
that's one of the main reasonsis because, civil servants in
Macau are not allowed inside thecasinos. The only exception to
that is Chinese New Year.There's a proclamation that
civil servants are allowed togamble for three days, and it

(45:06):
tells us at a certain time, wecan go in the casino on a
certain day at noon, and we canstay in three for three days
until midnight on a certain day.Or but if you're if you're in
the process of gambling atmidnight, you can stay for one
more hour just in case you'rehaving a lucky streak or
something. So that was a verypractical obstacle.

(45:27):
I did discover that there areit's possible to apply for
permission to go into thecasinos for research purposes,
and I did that many times inover the years in Macau. I
applied to the government forpermission. I I didn't ever ask
for permission to gamble, but Iasked for permission to go into
the casinos, which which wasgranted. So I was able to

(45:48):
observe people gambling. I spenta lot of time doing field work,
in the resorts, hundreds ofhours of time just sitting in
there walking around, followingtour groups.
But access to the VIP gamblingis is definitely challenging.
And so just to clarify forpeople who don't know, Macau has

(46:12):
something called a junketindustry, and it's kind of
unique to Macau. It's a VIP,system, which actually has
pretty much just ended about ayear ago, because some new laws
were implemented. But up untilabout one year ago, the majority

(46:33):
of Macau's casino revenues camefrom VIP gambling, which
happened in private rooms insidethe casinos. And those private
rooms are managed by companieswhich are called junkets.
And the role of the junket is torecruit high roller gamblers
from China or other countrieslike South Korea or Japan to pay

(46:53):
for their trip to Macau and tohost them while they're here and
and to get them to gamble insidethe private VIP room, which is
managed by that junket. Andthere are restrictions on
Chinese citizens in terms of theamount of money they can take

(47:14):
out of China when they travelabroad, and it's very tightly
controlled. There's a a limit onhow much cash a Chinese tourist
can take out of China intoMacau, and there's a limit on
how much money they can get outof an ATM each day. So if you're
a high roller gambler and youwanna gamble, let's say, a
hundred thousand US dollars perhand, you can't bring that money

(47:36):
with you into Macau. The onlyway you can gamble that money is
if somebody in Macau is willingto loan you that money.
And so the VIP junket industrywas all about loaning money to
high roller gamblers. Andbecause gambling debts are not
enforceable in Mainland China,If somebody brings in a a high

(47:59):
roller tourist from China toMacau and then loans them a
million dollars to gamble andthat person loses that million
dollars and then they go back toChina, there's no legal way you
can get your money back. So theonly people who were willing to
loan money like that to gamblersin Macau were people who had
associations with triads orChinese organized crime, because

(48:24):
only the triads were, confidentof their ability to coerce
repayment of of loans whenpeople went back to China. So
the VIP industry, which is amajor part of Macau's gaming
industry historically andgenerated a a large percentage
of the revenue, is is veryopaque. And it's not something

(48:48):
that somebody like me, anAmerican guy who just showed up
in Macau is gonna be able tojust get access to because,
these are secret societies inthe first place.
There nobody would wanna sayovertly that that the triads are
even involved in the VIPindustry even though everybody

(49:09):
knew it. People had to say thatthat there was no triad
involvement. So getting accessto that population of people and
that what what was going onbehind closed doors in the VIP
gaming rooms is difficult. And Iwas actually fortunate to get to
know one person who was anexecutive in one junket company.
Through him, I learned a lotabout how it works, how that

(49:33):
whole business works.
Through him, I was introduced toa lot of Triad members, I guess
we could say, but also to a lotof people who just worked in
that business. And there was alot of car dealers and security
people and bodyguards anddrivers and, you know, that that
was a very large industry thathad all kinds of employees. I

(49:55):
think anybody who doesethnographic sort of field work
knows it. It all comes down tothose key informants who can
connect you up to other people.One other thing I'll say, I just
had the advantage.
In a way, it was an it was adisadvantage to be a foreigner,
but in some ways, it was anadvantage because when Macau's
casino industry explodedstarting in 02/2004, The first

(50:18):
thing that happened were wasthat all of these casino
companies brought, managerialstaff from abroad, and suddenly
there was a huge influx ofexpats from Australia and The
United States and New Zealandand places like that. I was also
an expat, and it was very easyfor me to to meet those people.

(50:40):
And because Macau is such asmall place, it was very easy to
to sort of run into people. AndI was I'm kind of a recognizable
person. I'm easy to spot becauseI'm a small guy with a shaved
head and a goatee.
And so once people saw me acouple times, they remembered
me, and it was easy to strike upconversations with people. So I

(51:00):
actually had an advantageinitially in being an expat here
because it was easy for thoseother new expats to talk to me.
And since I've been around for awhile, they often sought me out
to ask me questions, and it justgave me access to people who are
working in sort of executivelevel of those gaming companies.
So I was fortunate to make a lotof contacts like that. And over

(51:23):
the years, actually, because ofthe labor law in Macau and the
encouragement by the Macaugovernment for those companies
to stop using expat managerialstaff and to start using Macau
Staff, that's completelychanged.
A lot of those expats are gone,and a lot of the executive level
people in Macau now are localpeople. And, fortunately, some

(51:46):
of those people I I met when Ifirst came who used to be sort
of low level local casinoworkers are now some of them are
now executives at some of thebig resorts. And so I I still
have some fortunate access topeople like that.

Cathryn H. Clayton (52:01):
And students. Right? Teaching at a
university, I'm sure you have alot of, students who've gotten
jobs who might be well placed.

Tim Simpson (52:08):
That's very true. That used to be very common. Ten
years ago, fifteen years ago,everybody wanted those gaming
industry jobs. There's oneparticular student who also
became a a major importantexecutive at one of the casino
companies, and he was also a keyinformant for me who helped me a
lot to understand how thingsworked and to get access to

(52:30):
people. But it used to be verythe casino industry jobs,
especially those junket relatedjobs, which a lot of has to do
with, like, marketing and publicrelations, were very desirable
to university students, I wouldsay, ten years ago.
But today, it's it's very muchchanged. The students today are
not so interested in thosecasino industry jobs. People

(52:54):
lost confidence in dedicatingtheir life to that industry. A
lot of local people did. I thinkyoung people, and they're
looking for other kinds ofopportunities.

Cathryn H. Clayton (53:03):
So maybe one last question, Tim. It seems,
you know, you just mentionedthat a lot of students perhaps
aren't so interested in gettingjobs in the industry anymore,
and that makes me think aboutthe future of this whole
industry. It seems that thelicenses for the six gaming
concessionaires were recentlyrenewed. When I was in Macau
last summer, the new resortswere still being built a pace.

(53:25):
So what do you think is thefuture of, Macau's gaming
industry?
What's that gonna look like?

Tim Simpson (53:30):
Yeah. That's that's a very good question. And I,
actually, I should back up for aminute and mention something
that I didn't mention at theoutset, and that is that,
historically, the casinoindustry in Macau was a monopoly
concession, and there was oneperson or one company that owned
the rights to all of the casinosin Macau. And in the last forty
years of Portuguese rule, thecasino monopoly was controlled

(53:54):
by Stanley Ho, who was a HongKong billionaire. And he had
four wives and 17 children, manyof whom continue to work in the
gaming industry today.
So he had a lot of he had moreinfluence in Macau than probably
any other individual. Hecontrolled that monopoly for
forty years. And when Portugalreturned Macau to the PRC in

(54:17):
1999, the first decision thatthe new local Macau government
made was to break that monopolyand to invite outside companies
to bid for the rights to getcasino concessions in Macau. And
that was what completelytransformed Macau's gaming
economy after 1999. The resultof that process was that,

(54:41):
ultimately, six companies endedup winning concessions to
operate casinos in Macau.
So the the monopoly was broken,and six companies came in. And
that included Sheldon Adelsonfrom Las Vegas, Steve Wynn from
Las Vegas, MGM, a company calledGalaxy, which was a Hong Kong

(55:02):
property tycoon, and one ofStanley Ho's sons who started
out with a partnership with anAustralian company. Those six
companies got the rights tooperate casinos in Macau. Their
initial concession contract wasfor twenty years, so starting in
02/2002. And so it ended in02/2022.

(55:25):
And all six of those concessionswere were renewed at that time
for another ten year period. Sothe structure of the industry
remains the same, but it was theindustry was heavily affected by
COVID. Macau was sort of lockeddown for three years during the
pandemic. There was no tourismwhatsoever in Macau, and the

(55:45):
entire economy is based oncasino tourism. But Macau was
sort of locked down, so it wasvery safe place to be.
There was no COVID cases at allfor several years. It was a very
pleasant place to live becausethere were no tourists.
Suddenly, there was 40,000,000less people in the city. I
experienced the Macau that Iremembered when I first arrived

(56:07):
in 02/2001 as this charming,slow paced, small community. It
was nice to experience thatagain, but it devastated the
economy.
It was handled very well, Iwould say, by the the local
government, and there was a lotof, financial assistance for the
local population that wasprovided. Nobody knew what was

(56:28):
gonna happen as a result ofCOVID. When it finally ended,
was gaming industry ever gonnacome back to how it was? And
what also happened during thatperiod was that VIP gaming
industry, the junket industry,was essentially criminalized by
the central government. Some ofthe money lending activities

(56:48):
that were so crucial to thejunket industry to finance high
roller gamblers, that wascompletely curtailed.
And the the two most prominentbosses of the two biggest
junkets, two billionaires inMacau were both put in prison
because of criminal activities,and then, the whole industry was

(57:09):
transformed. It still exists.The VIP industry still exists,
but it's a shadow of its formerself. In its heyday, there were
more than 200 junket companiesoperating in Macau. Now it's
something like 20 junketcompanies, and there will be
less next year than there arenow.
It still exists, but it's it'snot doesn't function in the same
way. And that all happenedduring COVID. So nobody knew

(57:31):
what was gonna happen when COVIDwas over, but it actually
rebounded in an incrediblysuccessful way. It only took a
few months before this pent updemand by tourists to come to
Macau, to go shopping, togamble, to spend money. This
past year, it's been aincredible rebound for the
economy, and all of thecompanies are doing much better

(57:54):
than anybody had expected thatthey would.
But there's been a fundamentalchange in the casino business in
that the VIP gambler hasdeclined, and it's been replaced
by the mass market gambler orespecially the what's called the
premium mass gambler, which isthe person who gambles large
amounts of money but doesn'trequire a loan from a jacket

(58:16):
company to finance thatgambling. The problem with that,
from my perspective as aresident of Macau, is that when
the gaming economy was populatedby a handful of high rollers who
were losing millions andmillions of dollars every time
they came to Macau, when thosepeople are no longer there and
you have to rely on the massmarket gambler who loses a

(58:37):
hundred US dollars when theygamble instead of a million,
then it takes, you know, athousand times more of those
gamblers to produce the sameamount of revenue, which means
there's more and more people inthe streets in everywhere. And
Macau is definitely inundatedwith tourists again as a result.
But another big transformation,and this is the last thing I'll

(58:57):
say about it, is the role ofthose six concessionaires in
Macau's economy. And in order toget their new ten year license,
each of those concessionaireswas required to commit to a lot
of nongaming kinds ofactivities.
They're responsible for helpingto diversify Macau's economy,

(59:18):
and a lot of responsibility hasbeen put on them to diversify
their businesses and also toparticipate in things that
wouldn't normally be part of acasino concessionaire's business
model. So in terms ofdiversifying their business,
they're expected to have a lotmore concerts, k pop concerts,

(59:39):
and and host sporting eventslike marathons and things like
that that will bring tourists tothe city. That's pretty normal
for a casino company. They wannahave these loss leader kind of
activities where that that willjust bring people in in hopes
that those people will thengamble while they're here. But
they're also being asked to dothings like participate in

(01:00:01):
medical tourism or to even helpwith the historic preservation
and revitalization of olddistricts in Macau.
So each of those casinoconcessionaires has been
assigned a particular historicneighborhood and asked to help,
revitalize that area. And Ithink that's one of the more

(01:00:21):
interesting things goingforward. And I wonder about the
role of companies like TheVenetian, Sheldon Adelson's
Venetian and Parisian andLondoner Resorts where his the
company's expertise is how tomake these simulated themed
environments. What happens whenthey apply that expertise to the
revitalization of historic areasin Macau's central city. The

(01:00:45):
future of the casino economy, atleast for the next ten years,
looks pretty promising, butnobody knows what will happen
after that because once theagreement with Macau and Hong
Kong when they were handed overto China was that they would
remain semiautonomous for fiftyyears, and then they would be
integrated back fully integratedback into the Mainland.

(01:01:08):
And when that happens, nobodyknows whether Macau will still
be allowed to have legalgambling, legal casino gambling.
The distant future is is a bigquestion mark, I think, but the
next ten years looks like itwill be more of the same.

Cathryn H. Clayton (01:01:22):
Wow. That's fascinating. I just wanted to
thank you, Tim, so much for thisconversation and for writing
this book. I really learned aton. And thank you for spending
all those hours hanging out inVIP lounges and drinking
expensive scotch with highrollers so you can tell us all
about, what we need to knowabout the casino industry in
Macau.

Tim Simpson (01:01:41):
Thank you very much for, talking to me about this,
and I'm sorry that I nevermentioned that how influenced I
was by your book, sovereignty atthe edge, Macau and the question
of Chineseness, which I think isthe best English language book
written about Macau, and I woulddefinitely encourage anybody to
read that. And it was a hugeinfluence on me and a model for

(01:02:05):
how to do it, this kind of booklength project about Macau. So
thanks a lot.

Cathryn H. Clayton (01:02:09):
Thank you. Well, Tim Simpson's book,
Betting on Macau CasinoCapitalism and China's Consumer
Revolution, is available fromthe University of Minnesota
Press, and I encourage everyoneto go read it. It's a really
great, great read. Thanks.

Tim Simpson (01:02:22):
Thank you.