The Chief Asia Inspector Blog

All bets are on with China gambling craze !

I read earlier this week about how Macau's gaming revenue surged 22% in 2006, surpassing for the first time the Las Vegas (where AsiaInspection will exhibit next week - by the way...) as the world's biggest casino market.

Seven new casinos opened in Macau last year, bringing the total to 24. The number of gaming tables doubled in the period to 2,762, according to Macau's Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
And this trends seems here to stay : in total, 2.2 billion people live within five hours' flying time of Macau, compared with 410 million in the same radius of Las Vegas.

I have always been intruiged and fascinated to see how Chinese people can be both disciplined, hard working, and at the same time crazy about gambling, to an extent we seldom see in Western countries...

Direct from the Factory - episode 5

After a short period of silence (for which I apologize - business is business...), I give you a new episode of our Factory Inspections !

We are in Chengyang, Shandong, and our inspector was brought to the "packing line" where he found working conditions and processes not exactly up to the client' standards !

Although we see conditions in factories globally improve in major industrial areas, remote areas seem slow to catch up...

Putting figures on China frenzy

I came across interesting pieces of information, released by the China Ministry of Communication and thought of sharing it, to put some real figures on the general China trade trends.

According to them, China has 1,430 active ports, handling 61.7 million containers a year. This figure is estimated to reach 140 million by 2010.

In 2006, 350,000 international ships visited the country's main ports.

Shanghai Port is world’s biggest freight port and handled 491 million tons of cargo in the first 11 months of 2006, while its closest competitor, Singapore, handled 410 million tons.

The top five destination for China's export (not surprisingly) were United States, Europe Union, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea making a wooping US$ 550 129 million.

This all just shows that that China trend is here to stay...