The boundless optimism of the Chinese – for whom nothing is impossible, everything will get better, and if you just try hard enough you're always bound to succeed – gives them a soft spot for the ancient art of gambling, while the absence of appropriate education renders them oblivious to its risks.

National lotteries aside, gambling in China is illegal. The law's flouting in public seems innocent, even enchanting, with street side mahjong and card players aplenty adding to the character of China's urban scenery. Plunge deeper, however, and the waters become murky.

Case of a gambling legend

Ma Honggang knows those depths well. In years past he traveled from city to city taking on rich businessmen and officials, even those from the criminal underworld in back rooms and apartments where high-stakes games are played throughout urban China. He became rich from his winnings. His most successful hour – one single hour – of card play gained him 780,000 RMB.   

Ma Honggang is quite open about how he managed to become so successful. He did so by cheating. 

In a classic case of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, Ma now shows others the tricks of the trade. His aim isn't to breed a new race of super gamblers. Quite the opposite. His intention is to make as widely known as possible the pitfalls of gambling and to warn people away from it altogether, especially in those back rooms where games are often rigged or cheated by criminal organizations. In Shenyang, Liaoning Province, he has set up a center opposed to gambling to educate people on its dangers and the risks involved.

A vice also affecting overseas Chinese

In his one-man enterprise, Ma is all but alone. Though it's widely known in government circles that gambling is becoming a huge vice in China, the fact is rarely acknowledged. Where officialdom decides to take action that action is punitive rather than educational. Gambling is also too huge a problem for the pretense, “it doesn't exist,” to be worth the cover-up.

Overseas casinos happily announce that their profits, though impacted in difficult times, have been shored up by the profligacy of Chinese visitors. Visitors from a nation most of whose citizenry can't afford to go overseas let alone do so to throw money away on gaming tables. The larger organizations have offices set up to make their establishments as welcoming as possible to their Chinese clientele. Online gambling sites have found the lucrative benefits of providing their services in Mandarin. Ignoring the overseas options, the amount of money spent on illegal gambling per year in China alone has been estimated at one trillion Yuan, approximately the financial output of Beijing.

The irony is that those Chinese addicted to gambling may be better off finding help abroad than at home. Just as the overseas gaming industry has acknowledged the existence of a strong tendency toward gambling in the Chinese community and profited from it, so those in areas of counseling and healthcare have recognized the underlying problem. Overseas cities with large Chinese expatriate communities are increasingly offering counseling for gambling addiction in Mandarin Chinese and, in doing so, face the problem that they're dealing with people who have a problem their own society simply fails to acknowledge.

While the local citizenry are familiar with the concept of gambling addiction and can thus recognize the problem should they get into difficulties, for the Chinese community there's little sense such a problem even exists. Chinese gambling addicts may thus get into far greater difficulties – usually by trying to gamble their way back out of financial difficulties for a far longer period – than those who are aware of the addiction.

Viewing gambling as harmless fun

However, even they are better off than their compatriots who suffer their addictions at home, where initiatives such as those of Ma Honggang are rare officially sanctioned. Addicted to their own mianzi (face), Chinese officials would far rather deny problems exist than deal with them. With no awareness in the community of gambling addiction, a new generation is being raised with the mindset that it's all just a bit of harmless fun – and perhaps the chance to make money – by parents unaware they themselves may have a problem. As a consequence, even innocent pastimes such as QQ games are subverted for gambling. The youth you see in net bars paying rapt attention to some bouncing penguin or a field of virtual beans may have more than their dignity riding on where those penguins bounce or how tall those beans grow.

Young Chinese are growing up in an environment where older family members have set the precedent of gambling as a harmless way to spend one's leisure time and now they, too, face the enhanced risk of addiction and involvement in the criminal underworld. Gambling addiction is destroying the livelihoods of too many in China. The answer lies perhaps less in punishing those whose lives may already be ruined by their addiction, but educating those susceptible of falling in its grip.

Warning：The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: gambling in China street playing China lottery China illegal betting China gambling addiction China