After the people of Lienchiang County voted July 7 to allow construction of a casino in Matsu, the ROC and local governments seemed strangely unprepared to follow up. They should take a lesson from Zhuge Liang, who at the Battle of Red Cliffs in around 208 A.D. had fire ships ready and waiting to attack the opposing navy on the Yangtze River as soon as a favorable east wind came up.
The Executive Yuan finally decided to put the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in charge of the gaming industry and related matters. But a special bill on gaming is still gathering dust somewhere in an MOTC file cabinet, although the Offshore Islands Development Act took effect in 2000.
Judging from past experience, a law decriminalizing gambling will take years to move through the Legislative Yuan. Once it is eventually passed, the county government will have to deal with water and power shortages, improvements to inconvenient transportation, as well as hotels, tour buses and labor.
In fact, a SWOT, or strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, analysis of Matsu’s prospects as a casino resort site shows that the only advantage the islands have is government consent. A whole book could be written on their shortcomings, starting with their bad weather, and the only opportunity available is mainland Chinese tourists, who would also need their government’s permission. Matsu’s chances of becoming another Singapore or Macau do not look good.
But determination and proper planning can make all the difference.
Singapore’s experience shows the importance of preparation. In the 19th century Sentosa was just a fishing village. During World War II it was an important British base, just as Matsu and Penghu were later military bastions for Taiwan. In the 1980s and 90s, Singapore put up many hotels in Sentosa in an effort to develop tourism, but second rate service kept visitor numbers to 6 or 7 million.
The outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2003 wreaked havoc with Singapore’s tourism revenues. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong then championed integrated resorts as the cure for the country’s economic woes.
Gambling was banned in Singapore since independence in 1965, but over the years it was proposed many times as a means to stimulate the economy, only to be rejected by long-time Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. When his son Lee Hsien Loong promoted integrated resorts, with the added feature of recreation, he called them “resort casinos” to emphasize leisure and travel over gambling.
At first, Lee Kuan Yew said gambling would be allowed only over his dead body. But in April 2005, at the insistence of Lee Hsien Loong, gaming was legalized, and over the next four years the government invested heavily in basic infrastructure and developers raised US$7 billion. In 2010 resorts opened at Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands, and last year the scale of Singapore’s gaming industry was third in the world behind Macau and Las Vegas. All this took eight years.
Sentosa’s attractions include shows and concerts, museums, theme parks and convention facilities, making the emphasis on recreation very clear. It is a popular destination for family travel—in other words, it is not all about gambling.
This sophisticated approach has brought Singapore huge tourism profits in just two to three years, creating a considerable number of jobs. Visitors to its integrated resorts are sure to enjoy a pleasant and easygoing trip.
But in Taiwan, no one—from government officials and developers to residents and guardians of morality—sees anything but gambling. Proponents are only aware of the monthly casino subsidies for local residents, while opponents see just the sin of gambling and negative social effects. With this sort of outlook, Taiwan is sure to call its offshore island gambling resorts “casinos.”
When Singapore ended its ban on gambling, Lee Hsien Loong said, “The whole region is on the move. The question we have to consider is: ‘Will Singapore be part of this new world or will we be bypassed and left behind?’”
Taiwan’s economic growth has been surpassed by Singapore’s for 10 consecutive years. As the country’s exports show negative growth for four months in a row, as cross-strait relations reach the point where easy issues have been resolved and more difficult ones must be tackled, as Southeast Asian countries no longer want to export laborers to Taiwan, and as the Ma Ying-jeou administration fusses over fairness and justice, one cannot help but ask: Where will Taiwan be in 10 years’ time? (THN)
(This commentary originally appeared in the Commercial Times July 10.)
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