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Posted At : September 2, 2008 04:29 PM | Posted By : D McKee
Related Categories:
International,Sheldon Adelson,Macau
In a "Gee, Officer Krupke" moment, Las Vegas Sands President William Weidner said he company wasn't rampant in Macao, merely misunderstood. Sands finds itself caught in the middle of a thorny labor issue. (Labor issues? Sands? Who'da thunk it?) Macanese residents want to see a larger incorporation of locals into casino workforces and guvmint officials are inclined to agree, while stopping short of imposing mandatory ratios.
"We are showing Macao citizens the way to improve their quality of life," said Weidner, in an unfortunate lapse into Great White Father rhetoric. He's absolutely right, though, about Sands having no "hidden agenda" to dominate the Macao market. If one follows Sheldon Adelson's rhetoric or considers the scale of Sands' Macao infrastructure, whether singly (Venetian Macao) or in the aggregate (the Cotai Strip™), its' intentions are out there for anyone to see.
Weidner also contends that Sands hasn't made one thin dime in Macao. Now, I suppose this depends on what your meaning of the word "profit" is. (Bill Clinton's lasting legacy may be to give us a heightened appreciation of the importance of semantics.) But it's quite a turnaround coming from a company that did well to pride itself on having recovered the $265 million cost of Sands Macao in its first year of operation.
But will it play in Peking? Fresh from having made overtures to the government of India, Sands is now turning its charm offensive on what we used to call Nationalist China, aka Taiwan. Is this an attempt to slap back at the ChiComms for continually tightening visa restrictions, by way of a veiled threat that Sands will take its ball elsewhere? Has Adelson gotten the wink and nod for Peking* that it's A-OK to make advances to Taipei? Or is he just willing to risk the wrath of China's Communist overlords in pursuit of the Taiwanese market?
In this case, Sands' agenda is anything but clear-cut.
* -- for those of you who balk at my eschewal of "Beijing" and "Mao Zhedong," I was born the same week as the Berlin Wall and am set in my ways about certain usages. So I completely sympathize when Sen. John McCain refers to the Czech Republic as "Czechoslovakia." It would happen to me all the time, were I in his shoes.
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