Betting On Beijing

Still, some Macau residents--especially younger ones--worry that life may not be quite as free after the handover. De Almeida, the lawyer, fears that Chinese pressure to convict criminals could result in lawyers and judges trampling legal procedure and individual rights. "Macau is an obedient child," he says, "and it knows what Papa wants." On a bright Saturday morning recently, wedding parties lined up in front of the Nossa Senhora Roman Catholic Church. "We're rushing to get married before the handover," says a bride, Anna Lou, 27, holding a mobile phone to her ear under the veil. She and her fiance, Thomas Ng, met five years ago in one of the local casinos, where they both work. "We don't know if the Chinese government will allow us to get married in a church without permission," she says.

But Beijing won't change Macau's special way of life, even if it's built on something the communists plainly abhor: the squalid hedonism-for-profit atmosphere that pervades Macau's casino culture. Gambling is illegal in China. But Macau depends on it for 60 percent of its revenues, and the Chinese leaders are pragmatic. Nobody is suggesting a change. There are no viable options. Gone are the days when Macau was the richest trading post in Asia, monopolizing commerce in silks and spices, gold and silver--and sending missionaries out to save heathen souls. When Britain seized the deep-water port of Hong Kong in 1841, soon eclipsing shallow-water Macau, the place formally called "The City of the Name of God in China" turned to the slave trade and, 20 years later, to legalized gambling. Who could have known that this would become the colony's most enduring legacy? Today Macau is a place of elegant colonial buildings overtaken by gaudy casinos, where prostitutes from Russia and mainland China line the corridors, and where tattooed "chip boys" hover around the cashier's window offering high-interest loans. Criminal triads rule the streets.

What makes Beijing edgy is not the gambling or the gangs, but the destabilizing violence. The battle began in 1997, when triads fleeing crackdowns in Taiwan and Hong Kong, along with mainland triads--some made up of former PLA soldiers--tried to muscle out local gangsters. It got worse last year when casino profits started dwindling. The war was essentially a battle for control of the so-called VIP rooms, whose high rollers account for nearly half of the industry's $2 billion annual profit. The fallout has been fatal: more than 80 people have been murdered in three years--including 37 so far this year--and hundreds kidnapped.

No triad leader has been more daring than Broken Tooth. As the local boss of the feared 14K, a triad with more than 20 factions worldwide involved in trafficking everything from arms to illegal immigrants, Wan flaunted his power, even making a movie, "Casino," based on his experience in Macau's triad wars. In a 1998 interview with NEWSWEEK, Wan boasted about his 10,000-man private army and declared: "There's no one left in Macau worth being afraid of." A month later, on the day a bomb exploded in the police chief's car, Wan was arrested. For more than a year, sources say, he was still able to run his empire from his jail cell, where he enjoyed phones, televisions and the company of women. Now he is locked up in a maximum-security fortress in the hills of Coloane Island, two kilometers offshore.

Even with Broken Tooth behind bars, few Macau people believe that the triads will simply disappear. "You cut off one dragon head over here," says a senior Macau police official, using the name for a gang leader, "and another one naturally springs up over there." Police Chief Antonio Baptista, who arrested Wan in 1998, told NEWSWEEK that he has a price on his head, so he has to "lay low in his bunker." So many local police refused to testify against Wan during his trial that Estrela had to partly base his ruling on media articles, including a piece in NEWSWEEK. As long as Macau has casinos and huge cash flows, triads will follow. "Macau is a cookie jar," says a former Hong Kong police intelligence officer. "And everybody, even the Chinese, wants to get their hands in it."

So how far will Beijing go to keep the peace? Gen. Liu Yuejun--commander of the PLA garrison just across the border in Zhuhai--told China's state-run television last month that his 1,000 troops stood ready "to assist in maintaining social order" in Macau. In Hong Kong such a statement would have sparked an uproar. In Macau, where the government is perceived as incompetent, the comments hardly raised an eyebrow. The police forces are widely seen as too corrupt--or too cowed--to deal with the triads. Edmund Ho, the 44-year-old banker who will be sworn in as Macau's new chief executive on Dec. 20, says there is already cooperation between local cops and Chinese intelligence. And he can envision asking for more direct help. "If the livelihood of the people of Macau is threatened [and] I need the advice or assistance of the central government, I will not hesitate," he told NEWSWEEK.