National People's Congress (NPC) deputy Luo Yifeng has presented
a motion to the country's top legislature that calls for a
stand-alone bill to prohibit gambling.
The proposal calls for government and company chiefs to be made
special targets and heavier penalties be imposed in any future
crackdown.
"A new, special law banning gambling, with heavier penalties
meted out to violators, is a lasting solution to prevent gambling,"
Luo claimed yesterday.
But China's gambling-busters and legal experts, while agreeing
on harder strikes, said they preferred amending or changing
judicial interpretations of existing statutes to creating new
legislation.
The current Criminal Law, enacted in 1979 and amended since,
sets a maximum punishment of three years in prison for gambling.
The penalties are seen by some as too lenient, "especially
considering that many cases involve millions of yuan and often
corrupt social morals," said Luo.
The proposed law would explicitly prohibit any government
officials and executives of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from
gambling.
"It will also set up parameters to differentiate normal
entertainment activities from gambling activities," Luo
explained.
Casinos and other forms of gambling have caused a chain of
social problems, and participation of officials and SOE executives
has increased corruption and led to a loss of state assets, Luo
said. This makes it imperative to increase the deterrent effect of
the law.
Debates on an anti-gambling strategy have drawn widespread
attention during the week-long NPC session.
The Ministry of Public Security said in a statement issued on
Monday that China's existing criminal code was weak in terms of
controlling gambling, but that revision of the law would be an
effective and more efficient way to deal with the problem.
The Criminal Law could be amended to allow for more severe
penalties for serious offenders, and expanded to include new forms
of gambling, such on the Internet and or outside the mainland.
Guo Bing, a division director of the Yunnan Province Department
of Public Affairs, concurred with the need to impose stiffer
sentences to deter violators.
An anti-gambling mission launched by the provincial police has
forced 78 casinos in the neighboring countries out of business
since late December, according to Guo. "Compared with making a
special law to prohibit gambling, I think it is more viable to
improve the current statute," he said.
Chu Huaizhi, a senior law expert at Peking University, said that in a
workshop held last week the Supreme People's Court and Supreme
People's Procuratorate had indicated that new judicial
interpretations of the gambling article in the Criminal Law were
planned. The interpretations, soon to be released, would clarify
the definition of "gambling activities."
Chu added that it would be impossible to eliminate gambling
completely, comparing such a prohibition to the ban on
prostitution. "It helped curb the vice, but the phenomenon still
exists in some places," he said, suggesting that high technology
and more efficient border inspections be used to check illegal
gambling at its source.
(China Daily March 8, 2005)