Beijing's Losing Hand

After passing through the gate of the complex, the vans stopped in front of a yellow building the size and shape of a small airplane hangar. There was little to distinguish it from nearby industrial buildings other than a garish arrangement of pulsing neon flowers near the glass door -- and the nonstop arrival of customers despite the late hour.

Inside, a hall the size of two football fields was jammed with eight banks of roulette tables immediately inside the door, a line of electronic blackjack machines against the back wall and 12 pits to the left for a game called heaven-earth-harmony.

The operators of this large and seemingly prosperous underground casino didn't appear to have gotten the word that they were under siege by the Communist Party. Embarrassed by recent scandals involving party officials who squandered public money in foreign casinos, Beijing kicked off a five-month anti-gambling campaign in January that officials describe as the biggest in Chinese history.

"We've declared war on gambling," Zhou Yongkang, head of the National Public Security Bureau, said in announcing the campaign. "We must stop the spread of this illegal activity."

The government has closed thousands of underground betting parlors that were defying the long-standing official ban on gambling (a bit of mah-jongg with friends excepted). It has pressured neighboring countries to shut down their casinos at the border. It set up 24-hour hotlines and websites to report gamblers and tightened rules for officials going overseas.

Beijing has released a blizzard of statistics about the campaign's effectiveness. Dozens of casinos just across China's borders are "dying," according to the official New China News Agency, while 100 have reportedly been driven out of business. Hundreds of thousands of gamblers have been questioned or temporarily detained and tens of thousands have been arrested, most of them released after paying a fine.

Even as the campaign continues, however, some Chinese are quietly lobbying the government for a more "realistic" approach to an activity sometimes described as part of their psyche. They may be making headway with one powerful argument: Allowing gambling would prevent billions of dollars from leaving the country.