Artifacts: Keeping it in the family

Vanessa Moore

It’s that time of year again where Christmas has gone and Chinese New Year is coming up, and whether Western or Chinese, most of us will have had to (or are about to) endure habitual large-scale family gatherings. And just like for Macau’s people, so too for the country. Last month Grandpa Xi Jinping paid a visit to check up on his errant nephew Macau before the holidays. Under the guise of marking the prodigal 15th anniversary of its return into the family fold Xi, the proverbial patriarch, made the journey down from Beijing to whip the MSAR into shape.
It’s no secret that Grandpa is on a family crusade. Upon taking up the reins of the presidency back in 2012, Xi made his own great leap forward by announcing a broad anti-corruption campaign promising that he would be “striking tigers and flies at the same time”, meaning that no Party official was safe, and that both prominent bureaucrats and grassroots cadres alike would be targeted.
Since Xi first read the riot act, the clampdown has netted those in the military, the secret services and plain old low-level cronies, and has uncovered millions of dollars held by corrupt officials both at home and abroad. In concrete terms, the campaign has already snared 100,000 cadres of various levels. Most surprisingly, anti-corruption efforts have even gone so far as to break the unwritten rule of touching the CPC’s inner circle, with former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, the most prominent official since the days of Mao, de-clawed in the probe.
And it doesn’t stop there. Xi vowed to maintain “high pressure” and “zero tolerance” in the battle against graft in a speech earlier this month at a plenary session of the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. The net is being cast wider and Grandpa has now called time on Macau’s black sheep exploits as he steers the family business into going legit. It’s time to buckle down, toe the line, and join PRC incorporated everyone. The nephew of gaming billionaire Stanley Ho, Alan Ho, was unlucky enough to find this out first-hand when he was arrested following the bust of the massive prostitution ring he was heading up at the Lisboa. More tellingly, it seems that having the right uncle is no longer enough to protect you from Grandpa.
Furthermore, Macau’s family elders are also putting a stop to all the gallivanting. The end of the year saw a new government administration sworn in together with the announcement of a crackdown on illicit money flows. Xi admonished that there be “greater control and supervision” of the gaming industry as well as, more ominously, “clean government”.
In terms of practicalities, the rich are flashing less cash-affecting everything from upscale restaurants and liquor to gambling-fearing that they’ll get caught in the anti-corruption sweep. Wealthy mainland punters are avoiding the casinos and Macau’s revenue is plunging because of it. In 2014 revenue fell for the first time ever by 2.5% according to data released last week by the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau. Now some are forecasting that they’ll decline a further 16.5% this month.
Xi’s crackdown has even snared the junket operators, and most visibly David Group, which runs rooms for high rollers in Sands and Wynn, last week announced that it was shutting three of them. Analysts are hoping that things will take a turn for the better when the next wave of casino resorts open next year. But if the high rollers are scared of getting caught with their fingers in the till, the only thing for it will actually be walking the walk and making a real effort at economic diversification rather than merely paying lip service to it.
But lurking in the background amidst all of this, the elephant in the room is the question of whether this is really about wiping out corruption at all. Back at the family compound in Beijing, some in Zhongnanhai believe it’s about Xi firming up power not only in the party, but under him too. Innocently netting powerful enemies in rival Politburo political factions such as Zhou seems almost too good to be true, and Grandpa’s poker face may get busted soon.
Whether they’re right or not, in Macau all this speculation is beside the point. If Xi’s anti-graft crusade has the (un)intended consequence of forcing the city to clean up and call time on its seedier underbelly whilst finally coercing it into diversifying its one-trick pony economy, isn’t that something worth thanking Grandpa for?