Word reaches Asian Gaming Intelligence that Kinmen, an island archipelago hotly tipped to host Taiwan’s first casino resort, already has a thriving gaming industry—it’s just that it’s underground.
Our sources say the reason that boatloads of residents from the nearby Chinese mainland currently take the hour-long ferry ride to Kinmen has very little to do with the latter’s seaside charm. Kinmen is in fact bristling with concrete blockhouses and military bunkers from the days when Taiwan’s former right wing nationalist dictator, Chiang Kai-shek, and his successors expected imminent invasion by his old civil war communist adversary Mao Zedong.
The reason for the Chinese tourists’ current interest in Kinmen, according to AGI’s moles, is that there are places where they can play baccarat (for money) without the troublesome requirement of sharing the gross with the Taiwan government. Given the number of bunkers and communication tunnels sunk into the earth on Kinmen, some of these establishments may be literally as well as metaphorically, underground.
More visible are the gaming industry training establishments set up on Kinmen by enterprising folk anticipating that Kinmen will have the country’s first above board casino.
“A couple of training schools have already been set up there, I hear,” explains one source.
“Perhaps they know something we don’t,” added the source.
