Around 120,000 Chinese nationals have departed Cambodia since news about the soon-to-be-implemented ban on online gambling first emerged last month, local news outlets report.
The Southeast Asian country’s online gambling sector has grown exponentially in recent years, nurtured by growing demand for digital gaming and betting products in the region. However, the Cambodian government recently decided to crack down on its booming online gambling industry, citing concerns over the impact it has on public safety and order.
According to stats released by the nation’s Interior Ministry, around 6,000 Chinese nationals have been leaving Cambodia every day since an anti-online gambling directive was signed in August. That makes for around 120,000 departures.
For a number of years, Cambodia has been a popular gambling hub with multiple Chinese investors opening casinos around the nation in a bid to become eligible for online gambling licenses from local authorities. They used those licenses to primarily target Chinese gamblers. As a result, the growing online gambling sector created multiple job positions that were mostly occupied by Chinese nationals.
The Ban
Under a directive signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen last month, the government of Cambodia announced that it would stop issuing new online gambling licenses and that it would not renew the existing ones. The directive further read that “some foreign criminals have taken refuge in the form of [online] gambling to cheat and extort money from victims, domestic and abroad.”
The crackdown on online gambling thus aims to overturn the ill effects the practice has had on security, public and social orders, as pointed out by local lawmakers.
The new directive was adopted just days after police in Sihanoukville, a tourist-heavy hub with high concentration of Chinese-operated casinos, arrested more than 120 Chinese nationals over allegations of running an illegal online gambling and extortion ring.
Last week, Prime Minister Hun Sen said that he wanted all online gambling operations conducted from within his country’s borders to be terminated by the end of the year.
The Chinese Exodus
The online gambling ban is believed to have caused the exodus of Chinese nationals from the country. Commenting on the matter, Ath Bony, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry’s General Department of Immigration, said that while they “don’t know the exact reason for the Chinese leaving, it might be because of the ban on online gambling, which has forced those who relied on gaming to return home or move to other countries.”
China has been extremely supportive of Cambodia’s move to ban online gambling. The move has actually come as Chinese authorities have been looking for partners in their effort to carry out a cross-border clampdown on digital betting and gaming. Almost all forms of gambling are banned in China, but that has not stopped operators based outside the country to target local gamblers remotely, creating a thriving unregulated sector.
China recently urged the Philippines to implement measures similar to those rolled out in Cambodia. However, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, despite being extremely vocal about his dislike toward gambling, said earlier this week that he would not ban online gambling as such a move would have a negative economic impact on his country.
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