下面的文章转自英国的经济学家April 23, 2005,欢迎讨论

"WE WANT Singapore to have the X-factor, that buzz that you get in London, Paris, or New York." That is how Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's prime minister, announced his government's decision to legalise gambling in the country, in the form of two large, Vegas-style casinos. Whether the casinos will indeed help to transform Singapore's staid image remains to be seen. But the decision has already prompted an uncharacteristic buzz among the country's normally quiescent citizens.

The government has contemplated, and rejected, licensing casinos several times in the past. One reason was that Singapore's economic growth was so rapid that casinos seemed like an unnecessary evil. Buddhism and Islam, two of the country's main religions, frown on gambling. The government itself has traditionally had strong, and often moralistic, ideas about how its citizens should behave. Until recently, for example, it refused to admit homosexuals to the civil service. It also used to ban chewing gum, which it considers a public nuisance.

Nowadays, however, Singapore's electronics industry, the mainstay of the economy, is struggling to cope with cheap competition from places like China. In the first quarter of this year, output shrank by 5.8% at an annual rate. So the government wants to promote tourism and other services to make up for vanishing jobs in manufacturing.

Merrill Lynch, an investment bank, reckons the two proposed casinos could bring in as much as $4 billion in the initial investment alone. According to its estimates, they would have annual revenues of up to $3.6 billion, and pay at least $600m in taxes and fees. The government, for its part, thinks the integrated resorts, as it coyly calls the casinos, would generate as many as 35,000 jobs.

It also thinks the economy (and the tourism sector in particular) will fare better if Singapore is seen as a livelier, less regimented place. So, for example, the censors are reaching for their scissors less often: citizens now have access to previously taboo items such as Cosmopolitan magazine and "Sex and the City", a racy television show. Last year, as part of a trade agreement with America, the government even went so far as to legalise the import and sale of chewing gum, albeit only of the sugarless sort, only in pharmacies, and only to customers who register. The new casinos, needless to say, would be in keeping with this increasingly permissive atmosphere.

But so is noisy public opposition. A group called Families Against the Casino Threat in Singapore, or FACTS, has been distributing bumper stickers reading "Casi-NO". Almost 30,000 people have signed its online petition against the casinos: a bold display of defiance in a country that has been run by the same political party for the past 40 years. "We were pleasantly surprised that there were so many people," says Fong Hoe Fang, one of the founders of FACTS, "because in Singapore, people are a little afraid."

The government, conscious of this opposition, has promised all kinds of restrictions to limit the social fallout from the casinos. Singaporeans will have to pay a fee of 100 Singaporean dollars ($60) to enter them. Gambling will take up only 5% of the floor-space at the resorts. Nor will the casinos be allowed to offer credit to locals, or to advertise locally.

The government has even offered to include critics of the casinos on a new council it is setting up to combat the ill-effects of gambling. But Mr Fong, for one, says he is not interested in helping the authorities clean up a mess of their own making. Instead, he wants to pursue his campaign. Some FACTS supporters are even urging him to convene a public demonstration; but, given the government's authoritarian instincts, he says, that is too much of a gamble.

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-4-25 20:47:56编辑过]