Soccer Gambling Thrives in China

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

06/22/2010

Soccer Gambling Thrives in China

China didn’t make the cut for this year’s World Cup in South Africa, but according to the police, thousands of people have still gotten in on the soccer action by participating in illegal online gambling rings.

Reuters

Chinese players sing the national anthem before a World Cup qualifying match in 2008.

As of Saturday, police have already confiscated $102 million in illegal funds and arrested some 3,600 suspects for illegal gambling in connection with the World Cup, according to a report by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Illicit gambling in Chinese soccer seems about as common as shin guards, and experts have said it’s also a key reason China hasn’t done well on the international soccer stage. Both performance and credibility has suffered amid accusations of match fixing and rumors that players pay for spots on the national roster.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal