China to legalise horse racing and betting

The Chinese government is set to legalise horse racing, and even betting, as the ruling Communist Party loosens controls on practices it once banned as feudal, colonial and backward.

The sprawling industrial city of Wuhan in central China, once a European “concession” or colonial settlement, will be the first to open a race-track next year.

Gambling, apart from a state sports lottery, has been banned on the mainland since the Communist takeover in 1949.

The decision is a response to a market-driven explosion in traditional popular culture, at least where it does not touch on politics.

The Orient Lucky Horse Group, the company granted the first licence to run races, said the venture would start small, with jockey clubs around the country invited to put forward 250 horses to compete.

A spokesman said the State Sports General Administration had granted the licence from September – immediately after the Beijing Olympics – but that the first races would not be held until next year.

“The proposal for betting on horse racing is being reviewed and discussed,” a spokesman for the China Sports Lottery Administration Centre said.

“Betting” might not take the form regularly associated with racing elsewhere. Punters may have to pay to compete in an “intelligence competition” in which those who correctly identify the best horse in advance will be rewarded with prizes.

Racing was stopped after the civil war partly because of its colonial reputation. It was introduced by the British who dominated the foreign “concessions” in China in the 19th and early 20th century. Racing lived on in Hong Kong, where it remains both the focus of society life and of the only permitted form of gambling in the territory.

The Jockey Club is to help Wuhan develop a code of rules.

The government's change of heart is most likely dictated by an acceptance of reality, with millions of mainland Chinese every year pouring into the other post-colonial enclave, Macau, where casinos are the main industry, and the realisation that it is better to find some way of profiting from the national love of gambling.