CHINA will fight attempts by foreign casinos to lure its citizens abroad, a senior police official said Friday, which could deal a blow to the gaming firms in Maca0 and Asian countries that rely on these punters for most of their revenue.

    Chinese gamblers often travel to the Chinese territory of Macao, South Korea, the Philippines or Australia, as gambling is illegal on the Chinese mainland, except for heavily regulated State-sanctioned lotteries

    Hua Jingfeng, a deputy bureau chief at the Ministry of Public Security, said illegal gambling remained a problem even though the government was “forcefully keeping it in check.”

    “Some foreign countries see our nation as an enormous market, and we have investigated a series of cases,” Hua told reporters, according to a transcript on domestic media websites.

    “A fair number of neighboring countries have casinos, and they have set up offices in China to attract and drum up interest from Chinese citizens to go abroad and gamble. This will also be an area that we will crack down on.”

    He did not elaborate. Paradise Co., Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts, MGM Resorts, Galaxy Entertainment, SJM Holdings and Melco Crown are some of the operators that depend on Chinese gamblers.

    President Xi Jinping’s protracted crackdown on corruption and conspicuous spending has kept wealthy Chinese gamblers away from Macao, the world’s biggest gambling hub, where gaming revenues last year fell for the first time since casinos were liberalized in 2001. At the same time, casino operators around Asia have been aggressively courting Chinese gamblers, with many relying on Macao or mainland junkets to lure high rollers.

    Casinos are not allowed to legally advertise on the Chinese mainland, but operators have skirted around the issue by promoting the resorts where the casinos are located.

    (SD-Agencies)