Losers and Winners of Online Gambling in China

Countless ordinary Chinese people, driven by greed and ignorance, have fallen into online gambling like the moths flying towards the fire.

In 2018, Chinese handset maker Gionee was forced into bankruptcy liquidation. The reason was that Liu Lirong, the owner of Gionee, gambled and lost more than 1 billion Chinese yuan in Saipan Island, leading to a shortage of operating capital and final bankruptcy.

Traditional Confucianism holds that gambling means greed and depravity. Many Chinese literary works and academic studies have portrayed Chinese gamblers and many people think that Chinese people are fond of gambling.

Before the rise of online gambling in many countries, China’s neighbouring countries once set up casinos in border areas with China to attract Chinese tourists and gamblers. Gambling-related criminal cases caused a lot of trouble for the Chinese government. Under pressure from the Chinese government, casinos in many border areas had been shut down.

The rise of online gambling has changed the story. Gaming companies have been able to spread their tentacles into every corner of China with the help of internet.

The reason why the gaming companies in the Philippines employ a large number of Chinese employees is that all of the Chinese employees can speak Chinese and most of the customers they serve are Chinese citizens.