In this regular feature in IAG to celebrate 19 years covering the Asian gaming and leisure industry, we look back at our cover story from exactly 10 years ago, “The Strait and the Narrow”, to rediscover what was making the news in January 2014!
The long-vaunted dream of casinos in Taiwan seems a distant one, with very little meaningful movement since referendums held in the offshore island counties of Penghu in 2016 and Kinmen in 2017 returned resounding no votes.
The lack of progression is disappointing for proponents of the idea, especially following enactment of the Tourism Casino Administration Act back in 2013, which technically paved the way for casinos. However, a second necessary bill to create a casino regulator and truly
make casinos a reality has never come to be, and the issue has largely faded from public consciousness in recent years.
That didn’t stop those who believed in the potential of Taiwan as a gaming jurisdiction from pushing hard for the cause a decade ago, as IAG explained in the cover story of our January 2014 issue, titled “The Strait and the Narrow”.
For at least a little while there was even a push to develop casinos on mainland Taiwan, perhaps the most logical having placed such developments in the Taoyuan Aerotropolis – a large-scale urban planning development and Special Economic Zone covering 4,500 hectares and located around 45km from Taipei.
Expected at that time to attract private-sector investment of US$17 billion, it was seen as a prime location for big hotels with big casinos until the government amended its own draft regulations to specify that any casino developments would be restricted to the six archipelagos in the Taiwan Strait, and only by popular assent. The Taipei dream has been dead in the water ever since.
Far more promising at the time was a proposal to develop an integrated resort on Beigan – one of the two main islands of Matsu – located at its closest point just eight kilometers from mainland China. The proposal was backed by former Las Vegas Sands executive William Weidner, whose vision included an initial phase containing 2,000 hotel rooms plus various entertainment and leisure attractions, growing to 26,000 hotel rooms over time.
Weidner – who claimed to have US$2.5 billion of investment already committed should the project get the green light – predicted 1 million visitors in the first year of operation and 4.5 million after five years, with 70% of them to come from the mainland. He also proposed further operator investment into local infrastructure, including the airport, and a university to train up and employ local residents in a pitch that was hard for this tiny area of just 7,000 locals to ignore.
As IAG wrote at the time, “It’s difficult to imagine what all this must sound like to people who live with almost no commerce at all, not a supermarket or department store, not a hospital or clinics or even doctors except those serving the military.”
Yet more than a decade on, and despite those Matsu residents ultimately voting in favor of casinos, mainland authorities have failed to come to the party and have shown little interest in doing so. While there remain some pro-casino forces in play – or at least a handful who aren’t specifically against the idea – the general consensus is that none have the political appetite to actively pursue an issue that will surely be highly divisive. So, we sit and we wait … but best not hold our collective breath.
