Macau, the world’s largest gambling hub, hopes to transform itself from a “tourism city” into a “business city,” according to the head of the Chinese city’s trade and investment promotion department.
Speaking at the Fortune Leaders Forum on September 8 in Macau, Alex Che Weng Keong, chairman of the Macau Special Administrative Region Institute for Trade and Investment Promotion, cited an interesting role model: Las Vegas. The world’s other major gambling hub has shown that a casino city can also become a “world-class venue… for business, exchanges, conferences and exhibitions,” Che said.
Play nor accounts for about 45% of Macau’s GDP and the industry supplies about 80% of the state’s tax revenue. The city’s new five-year plan– the third since Portugal returned Macau to China in 1999 for the period 2026 to 2030 – earmarks around 130 billion patacas ($16.1 billion) for what Che called “emerging industries.” The plan also calls for non-gaming industries to account for 60% of GDP by 2030.
Macau, one of China’s two special administrative regions along with Hong Kong, retains its own currency, legal system and customs territory. For Che, Macau can now use this autonomy to attract “emerging industries” that need regulatory flexibility.
“Emerging industries often require different regulatory approaches and different pathways for talent relocation,” he said. Macau “can leverage our position as an independent economy with an independent legislative system and an independent regulatory system and then invest a very large amount.”
At the heart of this plan is the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, a 106 square kilometer island next to the border with Macau. Che called Hengqin “a very important factor for the future development of the Greater Bay Area” and “an important national strategy to strengthen Macao.”
Macau’s other selling point is its heritage. As a former Portuguese colony, it maintains Portuguese as its official language and civil legal system, which, according to Che, “gives us real relief when it comes to trade and establishing partnerships with European countries or Portuguese-speaking countries.”
“When Macau’s head of government went to Portugal, who did he meet with? The president, the prime minister, the speaker of parliament, the head of the Supreme Court,” he added. “Once government channels are in place, pursuing business – be it investment or collaboration – becomes much easier.”
Macau is the smallest of the 11 cities Greater Bay Areaa cluster that includes Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou has a population of 87 million and produces around $2 trillion in output – more than Spain or Australia.
However, the region is still less than the sum of its parts, argued Edward Au, managing partner for the southern region at Deloitte China, who took part in the panel with Che.
“We already have a lot of world-class innovation points, but we don’t yet feel like they are integrated into a world-class innovation network,” Au said.
The solution, he suggested, was a “clearer division of labor”: Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou were leaders in “open, cutting-edge innovation,” manufacturing hubs like Dongguan and Foshan were playing a “midstream engineering role,” and Macau and Hengqin were carving out “their own niche in traditional Chinese medicine, large-scale healthcare and data technology markets.”
Che expressed hope that by 2036, people could have a broader view of Macau – and not just in terms of shedding its reputation as a casino hub.
“When people talk about Macau, [they] “This includes not only the 33.4 square kilometers of the peninsula, but also the 106 square kilometers of Hengqin, so that our external image becomes that of a unified ‘tech city,'” he said. “That is the goal we are working towards in the next decade.”