Gambling in China is illegal under Chinese law[1] and has been officially outlawed since the Communist Party took power in 1949.[2] Any form of gambling by Chinese citizens, including online-gambling, gambling overseas, opening casinos overseas to attract citizens of China as primary customers, is considered illegal.[3] In practice however, Chinese citizens participate in state-run lotteries, regularly travel to legal gambling centers overseas or in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau and access gaming through offshore based proxy betting and online gambling companies.
Gambling is generally illegal in China.[4]
The state-run lotteries are permitted, and The Welfare Lottery and the Sports Lottery set up in 1987 and 1994 respectively. The Chinese government does not legally consider the lotteries a form of gambling.[5] Illegal gambling in China remains common, including unofficial lotteries, clandestine casinos, and betting in games such as mahjong and various card games. In 2010, The Daily Telegraph (UK) reported that an estimated one trillion yuan are wagered in illegal gambling every year in China. Problem gambling exists in the country, and may be more prevalent than in countries with legalized gambling. Online gambling is another outlet for illegal gambling in the country.
In June 2018, the Chinese Government banned all online poker applications. App stores had to remove all poker related applications, and the promotion of poker in general via all social media channels in China (Wechat, Weibo) became forbidden.[6]
As authorities intensify efforts to curb such activities, gambling in secluded locations, and mobile gambling setups designed to evade police detection, are increasingly prevalent, particularly in rural regions of provinces like Yunnan, Shanxi, and Anhui.[7]
See main article: Gambling in Macau.
Macau is the only place in China where casino gambling is legal.[8]
Gambling in Macau has been legal since the 1850s, when it was a Portuguese colony. The region has a history of gambling on traditional Chinese games. Gambling in Macau now primarily takes place in Western-style casinos; in 2007, Macau overtook the Las Vegas Strip in gaming revenues.,[9] 38 casinos operate in Macau, and the region's annual gambling revenues exceed US$27.9 billion.[10]
See main article: Gambling in Hong Kong.
While some aspects of mainland Chinese law apply in Hong Kong, certain forms of gambling are legal and regulated in Hong Kong. The Law of Hong Kong is based on English common law, having been a British territory until 1997. Gambling in Hong Kong has been regulated since 1977.[11] The Hong Kong Jockey Club organizes much of the legal betting in the region.
The domestic Chinese demand for gambling is significant. Legal restrictions on onshore gambling in Mainland China have contributed to the growth of overseas and online gambling sites that cater to Chinese nationals. Integrated gaming resorts in Singapore, Australia, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines welcome growing numbers of Chinese tourists. Mongolia, which is neighbour to China, is also looking into legalizing gambling and casino for Chinese tourists.[12]
Several gambling sites previously existed along the China-Laos border and China-Myanmar border to attract Chinese tourists. In Myanmar, Mongla was site for casinos and other entertainment operations that are illegal in China, as was Boten in Laos. Following patterns of violence against Chinese tourists, the Chinese government pressured Myanmar and Laos to shut down these sites. As of at least 2024, the trend in both Myanmar and Laos is for casinos seeking to attract Chinese tourists to be set up further away from the Chinese border.
As in person visits to offshore gambling venues can be both time consuming and attract the attention of law enforcement, proxy betting has grown in popularity, especially for VIP clients wishing to discretely place high stakes bets. In proxy betting, clients communicate with staffers wearing headsets at baccarat tables in offshore casinos. Proxy betting was outlawed in Macau in 2016 and has never been permitted in Australia or Singapore casinos, but now accounts for 40 percent of the $1 billion VIP gaming market in the Philippines, according to brokerage CICC.[13]
Online gambling in Mainland China remains illegal, however internet traffic routed via VPNs, underground banking networks and payment platforms enable Mainland Chinese customers to access and remit funds to online gaming sites. According to 2019 estimates published in Economic Information Daily, an affiliate of state-owned news agency Xinhua, the annual amount bet through online gambling in the Mainland is more than one trillion yuan (US$145 billion), equivalent to nearly twice the annual income of China’s officially sanctioned lotteries.[14]
In October 2014, The Guardian newspaper reported that one major online site, Bet365 had been taking bets from Chinese citizens by using obscure domain names in order to avoid government web censorship.[15]
In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 started the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations (POGO) program to allow online gambling in major cities. Under POGO, the state-owned Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation issued licenses to be used for service providers to offer online gambling. Most of the companies which obtained POGO licenses were Chinese, and their businesses primarily catered to the ethnic Chinese community at-large. Over a three-year period beginning in 2016, at least 100,000 Chinese nationals were estimated to have moved to Manila to work for online gambling operators as marketing agents, tech support specialists and IT engineers to serve Mandarin-speaking clientele.[16] To side step restrictions on direct marketing of online gambling in Mainland Chinese print or social media, many online gaming sites seeking to attract Chinese customers have become shirt sponsors for English Premier League football teams. Dafabet’s sponsorship of Fulham FC and W88’s sponsorship of Wolverhampton Wanderers are just two examples of this trend.
The Chinese government sought to persuade the Philippines to ban online gambling. In the view of the Chinese government, online gaming undermines Chinese financial institutions and creates crime and social problems in China. The Duterte government did not want to restrain the online gaming industry because of the huge revenues it produced for the state, although after an August 2019 meeting between Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Philippines increased its raids on illegal gambling operators. After the election of presidential election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Philippines took a harsher stance against online gambling, and in September 2022, the Philippines Department of Justice announced that it would shut down more than 100 online gambling operators and deport approximately 40,000 Chinese nationals working in the online gambling sector.
Before 2020, a significant number of Chinese online gambling operations operated from Cambodia, particularly Sihanoukville. In 2018, Cambodia and China established a joint law enforcement partnership. In 2019, they opened the National Police's Anti-Technology Crime Division joint operations center in Phnom Penh. A day after the center's inauguration, more than 100 Chinese were arrested and deported from Cambodia to China to be prosecuted. Cambodia banned online gambling effective in 2020. Many of the Chinese gambling operators who left Cambodia after the ban did not return to China. Instead, many migrated to Karen State, Myanmar, in the Myanmar-Thai border region where they established gambling operations.
Dice games have historically been a popular form of gambling in China.[17]