From Casino Wars to Casino Capitalism: Sovereignty and Gaming in Macau

In this July 6, 2018 Colloquium Talk, Simpson discusses how the former Portuguese city-state, and now Chinese Special Administrative Region, of Macau has been transformed into the world’s most lucrative site of casino gaming, with annual revenues five times greater than those produced on the Las Vegas Strip. He positions Macau’s contemporary gaming industry within the city’s 500 year history as a Portuguese territory, and its crucial role in two eras of global capitalism: capitalism’s origins in European maritime trade, and its current guise in China’s emergent market-socialist regime and analyzes the productive role of Macau’s ambiguous sovereignty in the city’s casino industry, and the city’s function in the development of Chinese capitalism