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Chinese overseas acquisitions are slowing down, and regulators have issued rules that would ban investment in the gambling and sex sectors, as well as banning the export of core defense technologies:
A recent crackdown by China on overseas investments has been assumed to be mainly focused on high-profile acquisitions of things like hotels and football teams around the world. However, Chinese regulators also appear to have their eyes on two other lower-profile industries: gambling and sex.
China's cabinet on Friday issued rules on acquisitions abroad for the first time, possibly signaling a further slowing of the flood of money that has flowed overseas in recent years. Investment in property, hotels, entertainment, sports clubs and film industries would be restricted as part of the new guidelines, which the cabinet said were aimed at defusing risks and preventing crime.
But it also said that overseas investments in the gambling and sex sectors, as well as exports of core defense technologies, would be banned as such activities could endanger national interests and security. The statement did not elaborate on what it meant by the sex and gambling industries, but Chinese businesses have been prolific builders of casinos in countries such as Laos and on the Pacific island of Saipan that are popular with Chinese gamblers. Gambling is banned on the mainland.
[...] Thomson Reuters data released this week showed that all outbound mergers and acquisitions from China dropped 42 percent year-on-year as of August 14.
I'm confident that the seedy gambling dens will manage to get the investment they need and deserve.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 21 2017, @04:23PM (3 children)
"The opposition to gambling and sex all comes from religious conservatives"
Citation needed.
Funny thing, virtually all cultures have this respect for "family values". Family offers stability, when everything else is spectacularly falling apart. The sex trade doesn't contribute an awful lot to family stability. And, gambling can readily destroy a family. China has somewhat different family values than we do, of course. They have a history of ancestor worship, that we in the west have never indulged in. They also have a long history of extended families that we have pretty much discarded. Their family may be different than ours, but family is very important, and honored in China.
Yeah, a culture that values family is likely to be opposed to those vices known to destroy families. You have the "conservative" bit right, but "religious" is way off target, IMHO.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 21 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)
That is like blaming the gun manufacturers for gun deaths. The vice nor the industry surrounding it does not harm the family. The person who consciously partakes in these vices to the point where it destroys their families are to blame.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 21 2017, @04:55PM
Good parallel: The gun manufacturers provide, advertise, hype a product which they claim is fun, but is very easily misused with dire consequences. They are not interested in the social consequences as long as they get the customer's money.
The Chinese government value stability above all else. People losing their earnings abroad or bringing diseases home is a significant unstability factor. People "gambling" are regularly laundering cash and, when abroad, illegally exporting cash, including bribes... People spending billions to build gambling outfits are often associated to many other illegal trades...
They can't stop people gambling, but they are correct to act on the free-for-all. People breaking Chinese laws don't get a slap on the wrist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @09:08PM
With different ideas about what that means, since it's such a vague term that it's utterly worthless. More importantly, this vacuous term is often used by reprehensible, cretinous authoritarians to push policies which infringe upon individual liberties, like here.
Their worship of vague ideas like "family values" borders on religious anyway.