Chinese workers protest at Saipan casino opening

Chinese construction workers protesting over unpaid wages marred the opening of Imperial Pacific International’s Saipan casino last week.

The workers, most of whom come from China, said that they are missing several months of pay and will not be returning home until they are compensated. They claimed to be owed at least RMB40,000 (MOP47,300) in wages.

“In addition to not paying us for months, the hourly wages we did receive were well below what we were promised,” said one worker, cited by the Financial Times. “We are all very desperate because we all paid money from our own pockets to the brokers who brought us here.”

The casino opening on July 6 is an upgrade to the temporary base that the operator was using as it awaited the resort’s development. Previously the young operator was licensed to run its casino, Best Sunshine Live, from a shopping center, but it has now moved into the USD550-million, Palladian-façade resort.

According to the company’s annual report, last year Best Sunshine Live pulled in USD32 billion in VIP betting from just 16 gaming tables, narrowly beating the much larger and more established, Venetian Macao (USD29 billion).

Saipan is just a four-hour flight from Shanghai, a major target market of Imperial Pacific International.

The casino operator is looking to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the Macau gaming slowdown, initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and sustained by a more complex regulatory environment in the MSAR.

In contrast, gaming liberalization is a trend being observed across the Asia-Pacific region, from Vietnam and the Philippines in Southeast Asia to Australia and Japan on the Pacific periphery. DB