History of Gambling in China

Gambling in China spans more than two thousand years of betting on dice, cards, dominoes, lotteries and even insects, and rulers have been trying to stop it for almost as long. This page walks through that history: the ancient bans, the games emperors and commoners played, the curious case of cricket fighting, the Cultural Revolution crackdown, and what the underground scene looks like now.

Gambling in China today: illegal since 1949

When the Communist Party took power in 1949, gambling was banished from the mainland, and it has stayed that way ever since⁵. All forms of gambling are illegal under Chinese law, and there is no licensing system and no gambling regulator of the kind you find in Britain or Malta⁶. Cash poker rooms and casino-style tournaments are not permitted on the mainland⁸.

The practical exceptions are narrow:

• The state runs two official lotteries, the China Welfare Lottery and the China Sports Lottery, with games such as the 4 Goals football game at CNY 2 per bet³ and 7 Xing Cai, whose single-draw sales have generally fluctuated between CNY 10 million and 12 million⁹.
• Selling lottery tickets over the internet without authorization is prohibited, so official sales happen through physical terminals¹⁰.
• Macau, a special administrative region, is the exception on Chinese soil: it is the one place with legal casinos, which is why the mainland's gamblers and its history of high-stakes play flow there⁴.

One point that catches many people off guard: the ban follows Chinese citizens abroad. Chinese law treats gambling overseas, online gambling, and providing funds or technical support for gambling as violations of the Criminal Law and the Public Security Administration Punishment Law¹¹, and opening a casino overseas to attract Chinese citizens as primary customers can constitute a gambling crime¹². Gambling as a crime carries a maximum penalty of three years, which places it in the range where an offense may end up unpursued, one reason the authorities lean so heavily on warnings and travel advisories instead¹³. For the current picture, see gambling in China and gambling trips abroad from China.

Earliest bans: the Canon of Laws of the Warring States

China's first known gambling law is remarkably old. The Canon of Laws for gambling was enacted in the State of Wei during the Warring States period, roughly 476 to 221 BC¹. That means rulers were legislating against betting more than two thousand years ago, before the Roman Empire existed.

The prohibition was never a one-off. Dynasty after dynasty renewed it in its own way:

In other words, the 1949 ban was the latest chapter in a very long book, not a sudden invention of the Communist era.

From Tang emperors to Song commoners

For all the bans, gambling ran through Chinese society at every level. Cricket fighting was nurtured by Tang Dynasty emperors more than 1,000 years ago and later popularized by the commoners². The sport as we know it dates back to the Song Dynasty, from 960 to 1279, and it originated as a gambler's sport before gradually becoming a source of entertainment for the elite¹⁶.

Dice and board games of chance had their own life. A historical study of Chinese games of chance found that they culturally evolved into their documented forms through selective imitation and retention, and that the odds in premodern games often appeared "designed" to ensure a moderate yet favorable house advantage, much like a modern casino's edge¹⁷. Games such as shengguan tu, a traditional Chinese gambling game played with a board, were widespread enough to be documented in Manchu as well as Chinese sources¹⁸.

By the late Qing period, gambling was woven into daily life despite the official bans. In Guangzhou during the Tongzhi period, from 1861 to 1875, there were more than a hundred licensed fantan houses in the city¹⁹. That pattern, official disapproval alongside enormous popularity, is the constant theme of Chinese gambling history.

Cricket fighting: a 1,000-year gambling tradition

Cricket fighting deserves its own section because it is the most vivid surviving link between ancient Chinese gambling culture and the present. Two male crickets are placed in a small arena, teased or riled up with a straw tickler, and the battle usually lasts only a few seconds. A winner is determined when one cricket stops fighting, and the insects are rarely injured. The crickets are weighed in like boxers before each match¹⁶.

The economics around the sport are startling:

• Ordinary crickets sell for $2 to $50, but exceptionally aggressive ones fetch much more².
• A trained eye can supposedly differentiate 260 different grades and skin tones¹⁶.
• During the reign of the Ming emperor Xuan-Zhong, thousands of carefully selected crickets were sent to the capital each year²⁰.
• During certain periods of the Qing dynasty, cricket fighting was treated as a national sport each autumn and was organized by the ministry of textiles²⁰.

Most fights end in seconds, with a winner determined when one cricket stops fighting¹⁶. The fan base is made up mostly of men¹⁶, and the sport spread with migration: it is mainly found in the large cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and even in New York and Philadelphia, though the species used differ there²⁰.

The gambling side never disappeared. Historically, the lower classes placed particular emphasis on betting on the fights²⁰. At organized events like the Yu Sheng Cup on Chongming Island, betting on the games is illegal, and the winning team instead receives a certificate and 10,000 renminbi². In practice, the reputations of the owners are on the line and there is still plenty of betting on the side, much of it covert²¹.

The Cultural Revolution ban and its aftermath

The Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, was the harshest crackdown in this long history. Mahjong was banned too, seen as a symbol of capitalist corruption²². Cricket fighting went underground and survived, reemerging after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976²⁰.

The aftermath was a slow thaw rather than a reopening. Mahjong came back into homes and cricket championships resumed. But gambling itself stayed illegal, and the state drew a hard line between traditional pastimes and the wagering that historically accompanied them. After the Qing dynasty, the government had already officially prohibited cricket fighting because of its gambling reputation²⁰; the modern state took the same approach in reverse, allowing the fights while banning the bets.

The long view is captured well by researchers: in premodern and modern China, gambling in almost all forms was consistently viewed negatively by authorities, despite occasional legalization for taxation purposes¹⁹. The Cultural Revolution was the extreme expression of a stance that dynasties had taken, in milder forms, for two millennia.

What the underground scene looks like

Because demand never went away, an underground scene has always filled the gap. Illegal gambling den operators in mainland China are now starting to congregate in abandoned buildings, using CCTV networks and paid lookouts to monitor for police²³. Chinese gambling networks have also adapted to the digital age, using e-commerce gift cards as chips on illegal online casinos²³. The scale is large: one investigation traced how illegal online gambling launders money from China, with all forms of gambling illegal under Chinese law⁷. Online gambling offers no legal protection in China, so players who are cheated have nowhere to turn²⁴.

The games on offer in the dens are familiar ones. In one raid on underground gambling dens for migrant workers in Chiayi, poker cards were used to play Luosong, Niuniu and baccarat²⁵. Local enforcement notices list the same catalog: mahjong, poker, dominoes, dice, the underground "Mark Six" lottery, electronic gaming machines, computer networks and WeChat red packets are all named as forms of prohibited gambling²⁶.

The penalties are administrative for small-stakes play. Gambling that does not amount to criminal punishment can bring detention of up to 5 days or a fine of up to 500 yuan, and in serious cases detention of 10 to 15 days plus a fine of 500 to 3,000 yuan²⁸. For providing gambling conditions for profit or participating with relatively large stakes, the current public security law sets detention of up to 5 days or a fine of up to CNY 1,000, rising to 10 to 15 days and CNY 1,000 to 5,000 when circumstances are serious²⁹.

What ties the underground scene to the rest of this history is that it is not new. Cricket fighting's covert betting, the fantan houses of old Guangzhou, the fashionable mahjong of 1880s Cixi and today's abandoned-building dens are all the same phenomenon: a gambling culture more than two thousand years old, still thriving beneath a prohibition that is itself more than two thousand years old. For what is legal today, see the China lottery, sports betting in China and gambling laws in China.