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real-life lore Macao is a tiny peninsula
with some islands that's located in the
south of China but it's not really China
well you might not see any difference on
a map between the two Macau has its own
independent government its own money its
own police and if you cross from
mainland China into Macau or from Macau
into mainland China you'll need to go
through customs and get your passport
stamped this is because Macau is one of
two special administrative regions or s8
ours of China the other being nearby
Hong Kong across the bay both Hong Kong
and Macau are largely independent
autonomous regions that operate their
own local governments with minimal
interference from Beijing and while Hong
Kong largely steals the spotlight from
her sister what with the disneyland huge
skyscrapers with millions of people and
massive protests Macau is just as loud
but in a different kind of way you see
gambling in all forms is illegal across
the entirety of the People's Republic of
China meaning that it is illegal for 1.4
billion people or over 18 percent of the
world's population to partake in the
practice however since Hong Kong and
Macau have different rules and
governments the laws are different Hong
Kong has some limited betting on horse
races and lotteries but it doesn't have
any casinos Macau on the other hand has
gone crazy with casinos and you can find
38 of them to choose from today dotted
across the tiny territory tiny Macau is
the only place in China where you can
legally gamble inside of casinos but
Macau's unique situation extends far
beyond only China extend the map out and
you can see that casino gambling is also
illegal in nearby areas like Vietnam
Taiwan and Japan while only two casinos
exist in the entire country of South
Korea the concentration of 38 casinos in
such a tiny area is unprecedented in
East Asia and it's part of why Macau
could be considered the most
internationally visited city in the
world if you count mainland Chinese and
Hong Kong tourists visiting Macau as
foreign arrivals which you might because
they do need a passport in order
get in macao easily becomes the most
internationally visited city in the
world with nearly 31 million people
visiting in 2016 alone or nearly 85,000
people every day Macau only has a
population of 653 thousand people living
there which in the tiny space that it
occupies already makes it the most
densely populated administrative region
of the entire world but with the amount
of visitors coming in it means that on
any given day one out of every 10 people
that you see in the city is an
international tourist Macau as a small
city generates more dollars in tourism
revenue than the entire country of Japan
does and it's gambling industry is seven
times larger than the Las Vegas economy
Macau is indisputably the largest and
most profitable gambling centre in the
world but the story behind how it became
this way is both wrong and fascinating
the area of modern-day Macau was
probably always sparsely inhabited until
the Portuguese randomly showed up in the
1500s they basically used a big pile of
money to bribe a local official into
giving them a lease of the Macau
Peninsula and they even began renting
the area from the Chinese government
every year until things started getting
weird in the 1800s the British showed up
into the picture it began taking over
Hong Kong on the other side of the bay
and getting millions of Chinese people
addicted to opium to make some money
China at the time was like a heavyweight
boxer long passed as crime though was
weak and addicted to drugs and sensing
blood in the water the Portuguese just
started refusing to pay the rent for
Macau and negotiated with a chain
Dynasty in 1887 for permanent rights to
occupy Macau in perpetuity
since McColl's importance as a trading
port had begun diminishing following the
British takeover of Hong Kong the
Portuguese decided to legalize gambling
in their territory as a way to increase
the local government's revenue things
were pretty simple for a while with the
only gambling consisting of traditional
Chinese Fontan houses that paid a
licensed feed operate to the governments
but things started heating up in the
1930s when Macao granted monopoly rights
to the entire gambling industry to the
Taihang company but they really sucked
and they didn't really do a whole lot
with that in
whoops now we're in World War 2 in Japan
has begun taking a rude unwelcome
vacation in China with millions of
soldiers but the Japanese were much less
rude to Macau and respected the tiny
Portuguese peninsula without ever
attacking her occupying its Macau kind
of became known as a safe haven during
the war and it especially became one
afterwards when China couldn't decide
who the real China was and millions more
people died because of that refugees
flooded into Macau and with a new
massive workforce the economy began
booming the 1960s came around and Macau
decided to grant the monopoly gambling
rights again to a different company that
hopefully wouldn't suck as much this
time called stdm
which stands for this but yeah I don't
speak Brazilian very well anyway stdm
introduced western-style casino games
into Macau for the first time and
invested heavily into modernizing the
marine transportation between Hong Kong
and Macau so that the millions of Hong
Kongers could easily begin gambling
inside of Macau everything was great
until the old problems of there being
multiple China's came up once again in
the 1990s the UK gave Hong Kong back to
China in 1997 because they signed a
treaty back in 1898 that's they'd give
it back in 99 years from then
ninety-nine years came and went and the
British peacefully agreed to transfer it
back to Chinese rule the Portuguese
argued that the treaty they had signed
with Qing China enabled them to keep
Macau forever but the People's Republic
of China wasn't exactly in a listening
kind of mood and with a population of
bajillion times bigger than Portugal's
with millions of soldiers and with a
very unsympathetic United Nations
Portugal never really had a choice and
they too peacefully transferred McHale
back over to China in 1999 China however
agreed not to interfere in McColl's
gambling policy and true to their word
the Macau gambling economy has actually
exploded in the years following the
transfer the stdm monopoly was ended in
2002 in since then multiple new foreign
casino companies have begun operating
the territory and increasing competition
by 2007 the Macau
gambling revenues overtook Las Vegas to
become the most profitable gambling
center in the entire world and McColl's
tourism industry is among the largest in
the world
but McColl's heavy reliance on the
gambling industry does bring certain
problems as of this moment in 2019 taxes
on the gambling industry make up a
whopping 70% of McColl's government
income the gambling industry is heavily
reliant on the prosperity of the people
who actually gamble recessions mean less
money to travel there and less money to
gamble there meaning that a future
recession in either China or Hong Kong
or both which account for 87% of all the
tourism in Macau would severely
negatively impact the Macau economy
further it's unclear what China's
intentions are for the future of the
territory China agreed to respect both
Hong Kong's and macau's territorial
sovereignty for a period of only 50
years so until 2040 7 for Hong Kong and
until 2040 9 for Macau by that time the
world's largest gambling center could be
at a risk of ending or maybe not but
only China knows less than 200,000
Americans visited Macau last year while
tens of millions of them visited Las
Vegas either way if you're planning on
visiting a casino or gambling and you
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you next week for another new video then
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