Sleepy Taiwan isles face dicey $2 billion casino makeover project
Skift Take
The age old struggle between preserving a traditional way of life versus development, this one that will bring tourism and big bucks, but may also bring in drugs, organized crime and environmental degradation.
[caption id="attachment_21866" align="alignright" width="420"] AP Photo/Wally Santana[/caption]
Cheng Yu-lan surveys the terraced courtyard outside her deserted Matsu tea shop and considers the $2 billion bonanza about to wash over the offshore Taiwanese archipelago — a bonanza that seems set to change the lives of its 7,000 people beyond all recognition.
In July, some 3,000 Matsu residents voted 57 to 43 to permit casino gambling in this onetime Cold War flashpoint, immortalized during the 1960 American presidential campaign when John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon traded barbs over possible American aid in the event of an attack from mainland China, just 16 kilometers (10 miles) to the west.
Their votes were clearly influenced by the promises of American businessman Bill Weidner, who pledged not only to build a new casino, but also a world-class tourist resort, a vastly expanded airport, a 3-kilometer (2-mile) bridge linking Matsu's two main islands, a university designed
