Read ‘em and Weep: Macau eclipses Las Vegas

Leave it to the Guardian to remind Las Vegas that it’s officially in the rear-view mirror of Macau’s rocket-fueled casino limousine.

In a piece titled “Macau – gaming capital of the world,” Tania Branigan traces Macau’s rise from pirate’s paradise to, well, a corporate pirate’s paradise.

She writes, “They used to call it Asia's Monte Carlo, or the Las Vegas of the East. But this small territory – barely known to many in the west – is the new giant of the casino industry. For centuries, Macau was a Portuguese colony; since 1999 it has belonged to China as a Special Administrative Region. Thanks to the relative freedoms it enjoys under this "one country, two systems" formula, it has leapfrogged its rivals, embracing the glitz and kitsch of gambling; and, above all, the cash.

“These days Macau is bigger than Vegas: four times bigger, to be precise. Last year, gaming revenues from its 33 casinos hit a record high of £14.7bn. In April they surged to a new monthly record of £1.56bn – well above the entire annual takings for 2001. Accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that the yearly take could hit £27.5bn by 2014.”

Translation: Barring major scandals or a change of heart by a Chinese government I’d always believed to be pretty heartless to start with, Macau is set to expand its share of the market and emerge as its own casino superpower.

Yeah, well, at least we still have the Liberace Mus ... uh, check that, I guess the Liberace Museum is closed.