🔥 Chinese Company Bets Big on Laos Casino Project | Voice of America - English

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Around town, abandoned multistory hotels loom like decaying sentinels, colonized by armies of jungle insects. Home Page World U.{/INSERTKEYS}{/PARAGRAPH} In , a Hong Kong-registered company signed a year lease with the Laotian government to set up a 1,hectare about 6. At the Jingland Hotel, formerly the Royal and once the showcase development of Boten Golden City, rooms are empty and a tropical dampness spreads through the upper floors. Beautiful Boten resurrects many of the original plans for the town, with one crucial tweak: no gambling. But after so many years in Laos, they have decided to wait it out. With the Laotian customs office placed a few miles inside of Laos to make border-crossing easier, Boten became a virtual Chinese outpost, with clocks set to Beijing time and transactions conducted in Chinese currency. Since the early s, Chinese money has poured into this communist nation of seven million people, mostly into mining, agriculture, hydropower and real estate. A glossy prospectus details plans for offices, factories, duty-free shops, tourism developments, an international bus station and a golf course. Chinese tourists and business merchants poured over the border, drawn by visa-free access and gambling, which is illegal in mainland China. Old nightclub signs blister and peel in the tropical climate. Despite all the promises, the benefits have been slow in coming. Business is slow. The grand plans for Boten reflect the intimate ties between landlocked Laos and its giant northern neighbor. Construction is underway on a series of story towers along the highway through town, which has been lined with billboards showing President Xi Jinping of China shaking hands with Choummaly Sayasone, until recently the president of Laos. Zou thinks the real solution is much simpler. In late , reports emerged that casino concessionaires were locking up visitors who were unable to pay off gambling debts. The casinos spawned a satellite economy of brothels, nightclubs and karaoke bars, even a cabaret featuring cross-dressing dancers from Thailand. More popular is an adjoining room filled with slot machines and electronic roulette tables, the only type of gambling now permitted in Boten. Paul Chambers, director of research at the Institute of South East Asian Affairs in Chiang Mai, Thailand, said that while the early investments in Boten had a freewheeling nature, the spotlight now is on more strategic interests. About a half-dozen years ago, Boten was a casino boomtown, a pinprick of neon amid thickly forested hills. {PARAGRAPH}{INSERTKEYS}On the main street, weeds grow where bustling shops and restaurants once stood. Boten quickly went into decline. Zhang said, tapping cigarette ash into an empty Harbin Beer box. According to reports in the Chinese news media, officials from Hubei Province were sent over the border to negotiate their release. Most shop and restaurant owners packed up and went home. In a rush to bring development to this outlying region, the government gave the Chinese concessionaires too much control. Analysts say that much depends on the progress of the China-Laos railway, which has been plagued by funding problems and other delays. Even the cabaret with cross-dressers is back in business. Concrete was laid and brightly colored buildings rose in the hills. The main duty-free mall, converted from an old nightclub, is bereft of customers, its shelves of cigarettes and single-malt whiskey standing as still and pristine as museum exhibits. But amid the decay there are some small signs of renewal. Not far away, an old casino has been converted into a gem emporium, chandeliers aglow above marble floors and rich red carpets. A jagged hole gapes behind the lobby: the former entrance to a demolished casino annex. Across the tarmac other buildings stand empty, their doors fastened with cheap bicycle locks. Zhang Xiangxun, 51, a shopkeeper from Anhui Province who came to Boten six years ago, runs a small grocery on the main street, its shelves heaving with Chinese beer, soap, snacks and fireworks. Its gold-rush economy revolved around the Chinese casinos and gambling halls, which drew in thousands of visitors a month from across the border in Yunnan Province.