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Curb online gambling

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-15 07:48

The change brought about by the Internet is revolutionary. The change involves not just good but also bad outcomes such as online gambling. The gambling net in cyber space, not limited by physical constraints, involves hundreds of thousands of people and billions of yuan.

The largest Internet gambling case, which China's public security department cracked, involved six rings of tens of thousands of gamblers and agents. The money involved is as much as 50 billion yuan ($7.3 billion) and the illegal gains confiscated exceeded 800 million yuan ($117 million).

Traditionally, gambling is considered a major source of evil: it arouses people's greed, breeds crime, and, when gamblers have lost everything, makes robbers and thieves of them. The gambling business makes money by exploiting an intrinsic human weakness.

In spite of the fact that gambling is a legitimate business in some countries and regions, it has never been legal in the Chinese mainland. But it has not been rooted out either.

In recent years some government officials or entrepreneurs of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are reported to have gambled with public money in Macao or casinos along the country's borders. Some government employees or SOE leaders are also involved in the Internet gambling case cracked last month.

Investigations show that there is almost no chance of any gambler winning in online games, which are controlled by gambling firms mostly based abroad. In the pyramid-shaped gambling net, bankers and agents at all levels are invariably the winners while the gamblers at the bottom are always the losers.

Internet has made it easier for gambling firms or bankers to control the games without the knowledge of gamblers. In this sense, such games are no more than traps, and in order to expand the net, agents are constantly developed at various levels to lure gamblers. As a result, more and more gamblers become agents to get their share of the booty and the net expands rapidly.

The majority of gamblers are private business people. Compared with government officials or SOE leaders who usually gamble with public money, they are the most miserable. It is not unusual for them to lose all their savings accumulated painstakingly over the years.

It is not just gullible individuals who are losers, but the country, too, as gambling networks drain national wealth. Therefore, the crackdown on gambling should be intensified.

However, it is difficult and expensive to trace such activities in cyber space and crack down on it. Such servers can be registered where gambling is legitimate, and business solicited online in other places. That makes it hard to nab the original culprit and crush the source of evil.

It is a formidable challenge but needs to be taken up.

(China Daily 07/15/2009 page8)